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caution...this entry contains discussion of my innards and gourmet food, perhaps not suitable for those with a weak stomach or a hankering for something really good to eat...
This is today's second weigh-in. There was a loss of .2 lbs, after a bath. Interesting effect--I think some of the skin's water content seeps into the bathwater, or perhaps it's just that I was mighty dirty. If I can finally empty some of the contents of my bowels, I know the weight will be significantly less. Am using senna only for constipation these days. Perhaps the earth will finally move later today? People like me can vary by many pounds in a single day, depending on the state of the bowels.
It's Saturday morning, almost two days since I ate an almost-full-sized supper at the cooking school at St. Paul College (a vo-tech school). Of course, a large meal later in the day is a mistake for people with digestive system motility issues, but I can't live as a martyr to my guts every day because I do have my self-respect as a foodie to consider. Unfortunately, they do not serve alcoholic beverages, so I had to imagine what a glass of wine would have tasted like. I do drink wine, although alcohol does slow the digestion; when onions, garlic, wheat, dried beans, apples, most carbonated beverages, and corn on the cob are all on the forbidden list, booze beckons.
If anyone else is reading this, I am on a low-fat, low-fiber, small particle, multiple meals, low-FODMAP diet. If you think that is hard, you are right. Lucky for me that I am not as dire a case as many others who have stomach and intestine motility and malabsorption problems. I was diagnosed 10 months ago for some of the diagnoses and 8 months ago for more diagnoses. I began tracking my weight after the first diagnosis, if you are looking at my weight chart. Yes, I was overweight, but not severely so. I no longer am in the overweight category for body mass index, folks. In a year or two, I might be on the opposite end of the scale, perhaps too thin; we'll see.
If I eat wrong, I merely feel lousy. I do not vomit, do not get very queasy, do not need an emergency room for dehydration or pain. The lousy feeling passed away within about 30 hrs from the Thursday blow-out supper and I stopped feeling regret by midmorning on Friday when the worst was over. Also, I was able to sleep well that first night, without GERD. This makes me conclude that I'm learning to master the art of eating in restaurants despite being a gastro patient.
Theme of the food was Asian fusion I think. I ordered baked sea bass (fish is a safe food choice for me) with two sauces on the side. I got the kitchen to substitute sautéed spinach for the higher-fiber bean dishes they had planned to serve. There was another side dish that I had to forego also, but I've forgotten what that was. I also had a nibble of someone else's panko-fried calimari (had lots of pepper on it), which was so blinkin' good I wanted to just scarf down his whole order, but it would have meant ingesting quite a bit of fat plus the very chewy calimari protein and the wheat in the panko. One of the sauces was a rather greasy pesto made from oriental basil. It was good, but needed a menu item to compliment--cannot be eaten alone to any extent. Unfortunately, I could only taste a couple bites because of garlic (a FODMAP) and of course, the oil. I ate it with the fish, with the spinach, and with the calimari. Okay, maybe I had more than a few bites of that sauce. If I had made it, it would have had more Asian basil in it, plus parmesan or some other hard cheese. Hmmm...Wisconsin aged asiago cheese might have been a good addition.
The second sauce was more exciting. Bright golden orange with lots of texture. It was a cross between pineapple sauce and curry sauce, slightly sweet. I spit out lots of fiber, natch, but had such a good time with that sauce. I ate much of it straight up. I put more on the fish, the spinach, the calimari.
I had also ordered the soup, which was a sort-of sweet and sour soup, with shrimp-crab filling in the two dumplings. It was Asian and yet not. I only planned to eat a little, but I went back to it and cleaned the bowl at the end.
I just ignored the desserts, not because I didn't want them, but I knew I was way past my capacity to easily digest all that I'd eaten.
Only five tables were taken that night, a slow night on a rainy evening. Did a lot of talking to the waiters and hostess and a bit with the cooks, who are all finishing their last semester. Each student waiter has a different story...some want to go into bakery work, some into gourmet catering, some into specialty restaurants or food trucks with Midwest ingredients or with a collaborating craft beer company, or, well...you know how many kinds of good opportunities there are these days.
If you still have a good digestion, enjoy it, folks. Go try a new food, a new restaurant, a new chef's work. Heck, hit the vo-tech for lunch! You never know what meteor is headed for you in the world of growing old and you might as well be able to say, "at least I did that when I was younger."
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153.3 lb
Lost so far: 23.7 lb.
Still to go: 3.3 lb.
Diet followed reasonably well.
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gaining 0.3 lb a week
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