I have been doggedly trying to practice this the past few days. Drinking more liquids rather than eating every time I get the notion. Asking myself, "Are you REALLY hungry or would drinking something fill you up?" (Sometimes, drinking something IS enough--I just have to be aware.) This morning I danced around for fifteen minutes while I watched TV to get my heart beating. I'm also trying to think more positive thoughts--how much I've lost already, how much better I feel.
My shift is supposed to change to days next week, and I really hope it does. I'm averaging maybe four hours of sleep a night. I've been researching pools and health clubs where I might be able to go, and have found a couple of options.
I've discovered that I really love Bret Michaels' diet Snapple flavor that he created on "Celebrity Apprentice"--it's called Bret's Blend Tea, Trop-A-Rocka. Goofy as that name is, I hope they keep making it; I usually don't like the tea flavors, and it's hard to find diet Snapple in anything else.
I also discovered my stomach is happier when I have Jamba Juice swap out the juice and completely substitute it with the Splenda low-cal dairy base so that all my drinks are made of is that and fruit. Pomegranate and mango combos seem to be the mildest.
Showing posts with label sleep deprivation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sleep deprivation. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Monday, March 9, 2009
Nutritionist appointment
Just got back from nutritionist appointment #3. I lost (get ready for it) ONE (1) WHOLE FREAKIN' ENTIRE POUND. Two months = five WHOLE FREAKIN' ENTIRE pounds. To spare the expense of paying for a skywriter, whoomp! there it is. A concrete illustration of the reality of insulin resistance, sleep deprivation's effect on the cortisol hormones (I did not sleep one minute last night, fyi), and why I need medical intervention. 60 !@#$%^&* days, and I would say I deprived myself of anything that tasted really good for at least 55 of them.
I do like the nutritionist. She's easy to talk to, reasonable, and realistic. I forgot to turn my phone off and got a text during the appointment--the text ringtone is "Bust a Move", so she started dancing to it in her chair and we had a giggle. She didn't give me too much guff about that ridiculous craving assignment--she said a lot of people didn't even try to do it, at least I had tried. (I didn't try all that hard, it took all my energy to hold back the bile, but she didn't have to know that. I take my positive strokes where I can get 'em.)
She praised my food diary, which I have kept faithfully (grumblegrumblegrumble) and added caloric content when I had it. She recommended a couple of websites, calorieking.com and fitday.com, that have calorie counts on them. The new assignment is to incorporate more protein into the diet and begin to calculate that.
Protein becomes extremely important because immediately after surgery you are only taking in 400-600 calories per day. Post-bypass, the recommended protein intake is 60-80 grams of protein per day, which is a LOT. You're supposed to eat all the protein you need in a day before you eat anything else. I think the low-sugar Instant Breakfast and I are going to become even better friends than we already are. Apparently Atkins makes some protein drinks, and there is one called Muscle Milk that they sell at Costco and Super Supplements. SlimFast and Ensure have too much sugar (I thought I was the only person in the world who gained weight on SlimFast; now I know why I did). Milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, meat, tuna, tofu, peanut butter, nuts, beans, peas, lentils, cheese. She gave me a protein foods list with happy Clip Art illustrations of happy, happy food. Happy.
We talked about the water-drinking requirements for post-op. I'm drinking enough water, it's just how I drink it that is going to be different. You have to drink 16 ounces of water half an hour before eating, not drink anything while you eat, eat the protein first, drink 16 ounces of water after you eat.
We discussed the dreaded dumping syndrome, or specifically, sugar and dumping syndrome. I'll have to post more about dumping syndrome when I have the fortitude to research it further and make an articulate blog entry with some good information in it. Basically from what I gather, if you eat too much sugar, fat, and grease post-gastric bypass, you'll get violently sick. People don't know what foods are going to trigger dumping until they've had the surgery, though some have proven to be universal, and sugar is one of them. Simple sugars are apparently a huge culprit, so even the sugar-free chocolate isn't so hot because the sweeteners used in making it--the sugar alcohol derivatives, such as sorbitol--are catalysts for dumping syndrome. Splenda and aspartame sweeteners do not pose a problem.
She told me I won't be able to use chocolate to cope anymore. She wasn't mean about it, it was just a statement of fact. I told her I seriously thought I was going to need some kind of rehab. She gave me a food addiction website to look at and some sample questions to ask counselors if I got to the point where I could afford to see one. Since money is an issue, maybe a support group would at least provide some balm. It's not the amount of food or even the type of food I eat; it's the relationship I have with it. It sounds so trivial and silly, but it's a very real concern.
Tomorrow, the exercise physiologist. I'm so thrilled (NOT). It looks like I have to see him every time I see her, so, once a month. I'm not doing any more than I have to, and I told them that today.
Re: the disputed psych eval payment--I had to eat the $220 written report fee, but the billing person spent a good half hour on the phone with my insurance while I was there, who are now "reprocessing" the claim for the remaining $300.
Oh yeah, and it's snowing. WTF?
I do like the nutritionist. She's easy to talk to, reasonable, and realistic. I forgot to turn my phone off and got a text during the appointment--the text ringtone is "Bust a Move", so she started dancing to it in her chair and we had a giggle. She didn't give me too much guff about that ridiculous craving assignment--she said a lot of people didn't even try to do it, at least I had tried. (I didn't try all that hard, it took all my energy to hold back the bile, but she didn't have to know that. I take my positive strokes where I can get 'em.)
She praised my food diary, which I have kept faithfully (grumblegrumblegrumble) and added caloric content when I had it. She recommended a couple of websites, calorieking.com and fitday.com, that have calorie counts on them. The new assignment is to incorporate more protein into the diet and begin to calculate that.
Protein becomes extremely important because immediately after surgery you are only taking in 400-600 calories per day. Post-bypass, the recommended protein intake is 60-80 grams of protein per day, which is a LOT. You're supposed to eat all the protein you need in a day before you eat anything else. I think the low-sugar Instant Breakfast and I are going to become even better friends than we already are. Apparently Atkins makes some protein drinks, and there is one called Muscle Milk that they sell at Costco and Super Supplements. SlimFast and Ensure have too much sugar (I thought I was the only person in the world who gained weight on SlimFast; now I know why I did). Milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, meat, tuna, tofu, peanut butter, nuts, beans, peas, lentils, cheese. She gave me a protein foods list with happy Clip Art illustrations of happy, happy food. Happy.
We talked about the water-drinking requirements for post-op. I'm drinking enough water, it's just how I drink it that is going to be different. You have to drink 16 ounces of water half an hour before eating, not drink anything while you eat, eat the protein first, drink 16 ounces of water after you eat.
We discussed the dreaded dumping syndrome, or specifically, sugar and dumping syndrome. I'll have to post more about dumping syndrome when I have the fortitude to research it further and make an articulate blog entry with some good information in it. Basically from what I gather, if you eat too much sugar, fat, and grease post-gastric bypass, you'll get violently sick. People don't know what foods are going to trigger dumping until they've had the surgery, though some have proven to be universal, and sugar is one of them. Simple sugars are apparently a huge culprit, so even the sugar-free chocolate isn't so hot because the sweeteners used in making it--the sugar alcohol derivatives, such as sorbitol--are catalysts for dumping syndrome. Splenda and aspartame sweeteners do not pose a problem.
She told me I won't be able to use chocolate to cope anymore. She wasn't mean about it, it was just a statement of fact. I told her I seriously thought I was going to need some kind of rehab. She gave me a food addiction website to look at and some sample questions to ask counselors if I got to the point where I could afford to see one. Since money is an issue, maybe a support group would at least provide some balm. It's not the amount of food or even the type of food I eat; it's the relationship I have with it. It sounds so trivial and silly, but it's a very real concern.
Tomorrow, the exercise physiologist. I'm so thrilled (NOT). It looks like I have to see him every time I see her, so, once a month. I'm not doing any more than I have to, and I told them that today.
Re: the disputed psych eval payment--I had to eat the $220 written report fee, but the billing person spent a good half hour on the phone with my insurance while I was there, who are now "reprocessing" the claim for the remaining $300.
Oh yeah, and it's snowing. WTF?
Friday, February 6, 2009
How I can end up spending the better part of a day on the phone with insurance and the doctor's office
The past week has been incredibly frustrating. I was turned down for three of the five jobs I'd applied for; I didn't hear anything on the other two. My sleep continues to be on and off, which can make a person a little crazy all by itself. I tried to force sleep a couple of nights by taking two Benadryl, which resulted in grogginess the entire day after and still waking up every couple of hours. I took a generic version of Unisom tonight and was (am) up after 2 hours.
My primary-care doctor is about three hours away and so I conduct a lot of business with her via e-mail. My husband's insurance has been hounding me to get all my medications via their mail-order program, so I have been trying to transition them all. There are seven or eight of them. The health insurance took so long to process the initial switch that I ran out of everything for several days, requiring several frantic phone calls back and forth with insurance and the doctor's office, paying almost $20 to have overnight delivery, etc., and after all that neither my antidepressant nor my sleep medication were included. I've emailed my doctor two or three times in the last couple of weeks to have those things transitioned as well. Of course, the emails were never answered and I found myself playing the call-everyone-involved-two-or-three-times game a couple of days ago to try to get those medications transferred to the mail order pharmacy program before I ran out of them, having to request expensive overnight delivery again. My doctor and I have had a long-standing relationship, and she has never had a problem changing a medication for me. Unfortunately, I think her staff is getting their signals crossed now; I haven't had any direct communication with her at all on this issue, and after thinking all was said and done and the medications were ordered, I get a call yesterday from her staff saying I had never gotten the new sleep medication from her previously and that they were just going to discard the request from insurance to fill it--because insurance had referred to it as "a refill". (I had made it clear to insurance that it was a new medication.) Of course, this was left on my voicemail at home while I was out; of course, I received it after their office had been closed on Friday afternoon; and of course, they acted annoyed, like I was trying to put something shady past them, sounding rather indignant with me on the message they left. And of COURSE, the sleep medication is the one being disputed.
Doubly frustrating is the fact that I tried repeatedly to get the fax number for the doctor to send a request for the new medication to insurance, but insurance would not give it to me, preferring instead to fax something to the doctor and have her fax it back to them. If they had simply given me their fax number in the first place, I seriously doubt this would have played out the way it did. I left a frustrated message on the doctor's office voicemail in which I doubtless sound like a total freaking loon, telling the entire story for what felt like the 500th time and trying desperately to say the right polite words at proper intervals.
"How do you not go mental?" a friend asked me not long ago. I chuckled somewhat ruefully; I think it's too late to refer to it as "going" mental at this point.
My primary-care doctor is about three hours away and so I conduct a lot of business with her via e-mail. My husband's insurance has been hounding me to get all my medications via their mail-order program, so I have been trying to transition them all. There are seven or eight of them. The health insurance took so long to process the initial switch that I ran out of everything for several days, requiring several frantic phone calls back and forth with insurance and the doctor's office, paying almost $20 to have overnight delivery, etc., and after all that neither my antidepressant nor my sleep medication were included. I've emailed my doctor two or three times in the last couple of weeks to have those things transitioned as well. Of course, the emails were never answered and I found myself playing the call-everyone-involved-two-or-three-times game a couple of days ago to try to get those medications transferred to the mail order pharmacy program before I ran out of them, having to request expensive overnight delivery again. My doctor and I have had a long-standing relationship, and she has never had a problem changing a medication for me. Unfortunately, I think her staff is getting their signals crossed now; I haven't had any direct communication with her at all on this issue, and after thinking all was said and done and the medications were ordered, I get a call yesterday from her staff saying I had never gotten the new sleep medication from her previously and that they were just going to discard the request from insurance to fill it--because insurance had referred to it as "a refill". (I had made it clear to insurance that it was a new medication.) Of course, this was left on my voicemail at home while I was out; of course, I received it after their office had been closed on Friday afternoon; and of course, they acted annoyed, like I was trying to put something shady past them, sounding rather indignant with me on the message they left. And of COURSE, the sleep medication is the one being disputed.
Doubly frustrating is the fact that I tried repeatedly to get the fax number for the doctor to send a request for the new medication to insurance, but insurance would not give it to me, preferring instead to fax something to the doctor and have her fax it back to them. If they had simply given me their fax number in the first place, I seriously doubt this would have played out the way it did. I left a frustrated message on the doctor's office voicemail in which I doubtless sound like a total freaking loon, telling the entire story for what felt like the 500th time and trying desperately to say the right polite words at proper intervals.
"How do you not go mental?" a friend asked me not long ago. I chuckled somewhat ruefully; I think it's too late to refer to it as "going" mental at this point.
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About Me
- Salted with Shadows
- Seattle, WA, United States
- This blog focuses largely on a personal journey to and through weight-loss surgery. It's also about reading, writing, animals, photography, love, humor, music, thinking out loud, and memes. In other words...life.
