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You would think that after subjecting myself to a major life changing surgery that I would just be completely done with old habits. Wouldn’t you? I did. We’d both be wrong.

I mean after not eating much solid food for 6 weeks, you’d think I’d ease back into things. Nope, been through the drive through on more than one . . . ok on more than 10 occasions. Coke is back. You never would have known I had any surgery at all. Yes, I’m eating less than I used to, but some habits are coming back.

That’s why I know I made the right decision by doing the surgery. After my first band fill almost a month ago, the nurse told me this would feel like “little or no restriction” and she was right. With the exception of one embarassing incident, I’ve pretty well been able to eat anything I wanted to. With lots of chewing and lots of pausing, pretty much anything will go down. Except crappy mall chinese food. If you’re squeamish, skip the next paragraph.

Last Monday (5th of October) I was at the mall getting the ghost armor put on my new iPhone. I had about 20 minutes to kill and hadn’t had lunch yet. I cruised the food court and since it’s under construction, they have like three places open. I chose the crappy chinese food place, figuring that chow mein would go down easy. So I got Chow mein and General Tso’s chicken. The chicken was really dry and no matter how much I chewed, it really didn’t break down. But being one to push my luck, I swallowed it anyway. A few bites later, that painful heartburn feeling kicked in and I knew it wasn’t going down easy. I tried to take a few sips of lemonade to urge it through, but that didn’t work. So I ended up in this swallow saliva, burp, swallow saliva loop. Until finally nothing went through and everything came back. Yep . . . gacked all over my plate of chinese food. Now it was really only saliva and bits of chewed food, so not as bad as you would think, but still embarassing none the less. I threw away my food, learned a lesson and walked down the mall. Apparently I wasn’t done. I gacked one more time into my hand and dumped that into a trash can. In the middle of the MALL! I felt sexy that day!

OK, all my squeamish readers back? Everyone else? I apologize for the previous paragraph, it’s not my most proud moment. So anyway, I go in on Monday for my second band fill. And I’m actually excited about it. Even knowing that stuff from the previous paragraph is more likely than ever to happen. But the forcing of myself to eat less is really what it’s going to take. I don’t have the willpower to do it on my own. I know that now, and I know this was the right decision. Fortunately during this time, my weight hasn’t gone up much . . . only a couple pounds. Plus I haven’t really worked out the past couple weeks, until this morning. I’m going to shoot for doing the elliptical today (done), tomorrow and at least Sunday so I can show SOME progress at the doctor’s office on Monday.

Here’s my elliptical workout for this morning:

• Total Time: 40:00 minutes
• 5,664 Strides
• Average Heart Rate 137
• Max Heart Rate 151
• 39:47 in Zone
• 632.4 Calories burned
• 2.95 Miles