Post gastrectomy is a constant roller coaster. Generally right now, it’s going really good. My life is crazy busy in a good way, hence not much blogging.

The biggest challenge to post gastrectomy is how often you have to eat and how knitted into the fabric of society eating is. Meals are a bit of a roll of the dice. You can be marching along doing awesome all day and then end up spitting up your dinner because you didn’t chew it down enough. So you have to appreciate your victories and not let it get you down when a meal doesn’t work. This positive mentality is easier to put down in a sentence than to live out in real life.

I’m getting better at knowing what my body can and cannot handle. Apparently I can eat peanut butter M&Ms really well. I do have to watch sugars though, particularly when there’s no protein coupled with it. I think peanut butter M&Ms do so well just because the peanut butter has the protein. If I do eat too much sugar, I just feel like crap for 15-30 minutes until it passes. This doesn’t often happen to me now luckily.

I’m highly susceptible to caffeine. I drank an iced tea the other day that had caffeine and didn’t give it much thought. I ended up a jittery disaster afterwards. I had to eat some food to get past the jitters.

A few new additions to my diet:
Every type of almond
Grapes with skins (really cautious and chew a lot)
Tomatoes – cut off skins
Pineapple chunks
Pirate booty (I can shovel this stuff in my mouth and swallow it as if I had a stomach. It almost melts in your mouth.)

Major hydration victory: I can just about “chug” water!! I’ve also notice my portion sizes are expanding pretty well!

Running Victory: I was able to run 4.3 mi at an average pace of 8:01. So I’ve still got it. (Mostly I ran faster so I could get back for water sooner!) The run was everything it could be. I felt great, was able to hydrate well before and mentally needed the run to purge the craziness of the day out of my mind.

Life victory: I STILL beat cancer!

Goodnight!