I Survived Golden Corral??

For the past week and a half, my mother has been in town to help me with my initial stages of surgery recovery.  It's been a challenge from the very first day that she's been here because I was on my pre-op liquid diet when she arrived, then on to clear liquids, and now my pureed diet while my mom is able to eat whatever her heart desires.  We've been into several restaurants, to the movies, and of course the grocery store and she even brought Bojangle's Fried Chicken into my hospital room, yet I've done really well at dealing with being surrounded by my favorite foods without being able to have them.  I've remained focused on my goal and the fact that I knew that this time would come.

After surviving the movie theatre today being surrounded by the smell of hot, fresh, buttered popcorn, my mom elected to go to Golden Corral for dinner.  For those of you not from the south, Golden Corral is a tasty, home-cooked, buffet restaurant with freshly baked yeast rolls, cookies, cakes, cooked to order steaks, freshly sliced meats, fried chicken, and many other Southern food favorites including sweet iced tea.  I once knew someone who called it "The Trough", which is quite an appropriate name for the place because once inside, you really are tempted to fill up your plate, forgo the silverware, and just go to town coming up for air only between trips to the buffet!

When my mom said that she wanted to go to Golden Corral, I thought about saying that I couldn't handle it, but at the same time, I know that there are going to be situations when I'll have social obligations in the future where I am confronted with my favorite foods and I'll need to adjust.  So.....off to "The Trough" we go!

To remind you, I'm on my pureed diet now so there are some normal foods that I can have.  What matters most next to nutritional quality of course is the consistency of the food.  I was hungry and figured that there might be a few options for me.  I'm pretty proud of myself.  Before paying and committing to eating, I browsed over the buffet selections to see if there was indeed anything that I could have within reason.  I managed to find some tuna salad that I could pick the celery and onion pieces out of, a tiny bit of mashed potatoes, meatloaf with tomato sauce, and applesauce.  I put a small amount of each on my plate and figured, "go with what you know......start with the protein".  I started with the tuna salad and was able to finish that along with the spoonful of mashed potatoes and about 2 bites of the meatloaf.  I was full and satisfied and ate slowly enough to hopefully give my stomach the opportunity to tolerate everything.

So far so good on the digestion side, but I have to say that mentally that was THE greatest challenge that I've had since doing my pre-op liquid diet and now since surgery.  Just seeing all of the foods that I normally would have not just eaten but devoured!  Watching others come to their tables with plates of my favorites and watching my mom pick over her red velvet cake that I wanted to steal because she ate around the frosting leaving just the icing on the plate.  It was really hard!!  Even now a couple of hours later with my stomach full enough that I couldn't possibly eat a thing, my brain still says, "I want this....I want that!  I wish I could have taken just a bite of this or a spoonful of that!" 

It's so amazing that even though our brains control everything, they can also be so wrong about some things.  Sure, I'd love the taste of almost every one of those foods, but do I really want them?  Hmmm, (all surgery aside) let me think.  Do I want to eat them and feel bloated and overstuffed?  Do I want to feel the anger at myself for being out of control?  Do I want to wake up in the morning feeling famished because my blood sugar has spiked and dropped so low that I can barely move?  Ummm...no, I think I'll take the memories of all of the times that I have eaten all of that stuff before and have a sip of a lemonade protein drink.  I think I'll enjoy the way my clothes are feeling and the numbers that I'm seeing on the scale.

I know that the honeymoon period of only being able to eat these small amounts will not last long, yet in a way, because my brain still wants these foods now, there isn't really much of a honeymoon at all.  This is such a scary journey!!  It's somewhat easy to resist now, but will I always be successful at resisting?  The only thing that I know of that I can do, is to work through some of the books that I have that teach different methods of focusing on the true purpose of food and my feelings, and of course, give a gift to a therapist this holiday season......a little gift called JOB SECURITY!!!