First meal out

My other half and I went out for a meal with a large group (16) of friends last night. It was the first time I have eaten anywhere except at home since Christmas, and the first time since being banded that I've eaten in a restaurant. It was fortunate for me that we all opted for a two-course meal deal, otherwise I was going to start panicking about feeling 'obliged' to eat a third course! My other worry was that I had no idea what was going to be on the menu - but as it turned out there was quite a bit of variety.

In the end I decided to play safe with the starter and went for a spicy tomato soup. This, of course, is a 'slider' food so I knew it wouldn't fill me up too much and I could eat it at about the same pace as other people. I opted for baked cod on a bed of minted pea for the main course. Vegetables and baby potatoes came separately on large plates for the whole table. That was a good thing because it meant I could be very sparing about how much veg and potatoes I put on my plate. I selected one small potato, a piece of cauliflower, three mange tout and a spoonful of red cabbage.

The meal was absolutely delicious although it took me ages to eat. Everyone else on the table finished before I was even half way through, and I really was trying to eat as fast as I could! I lipread a discussion between two ladies who were saying that I was taking a long time to finish my meal because the 'loin of cod' had been really large. In fact, it wasn't a particularly large piece of fish at all, but little did they know! Then someone at the other end of the table called the waiter over and asked him to start clearing the plates away, but the waiter pointed over in my direction indicating that someone was still eating! Then the guy next to me began asking questions about the food on my plate and said that I seemed to be a very fastidious eater! I think I partly sparked this because I'd earlier told him that I am very fussy about my tea (I drink it extremely weak, black and sugarless) - but I am definitely not a fussy eater - he mistook slowness for fastidiousness!

I have to confess that I found the slow-eating thing quite embarrassing, particularly since it seemed to spark these three seperate incidents! It meant that towards the end of my meal I really was rushing it down and not enjoying it as much as I might otherwise have done. I guess the lesson to draw from this is that next time, I should just go out for a meal with my husband or a couple of family members who know about the band. Eating out in a big group like this I felt that all eyes were on me as I sat chewing everything to death. Having said that, the food itself was lovely and I really enjoyed it. My only real disappointment of the evening was that I didn't feel really full at the end of it. The meal was not large by any standards but was probably 50% bigger than my normal 7-inch plate size. This suggests that I still don't have enough restriction from my band and will need another fill sometime soon. I am thinking in terms of something like 0.2ml so that I don't get into the indigestion and slime problems I had last time.

I have a few more eating challenges coming up in the next few weeks. In a couple of weeks time I am going away for the weekend with some professional colleagues and will be staying in a hotel. I guess we will be eating together in the evenings so I'll have to go through the 'everyone's looking at me 'cause I'm eating slow' thing again. A few weeks after that I am going away with two male colleagues for a whole week in Scotland and staying at an activity centre. We have stayed there several times before and the food is pretty awful - very fatty and unhealthy, with battered vegetables and burgers frequenting the menu! Fortunately the place has separate cooking facilities available to guests which I may decide to use rather than filling my face with bad stuff.

My immediate challange is to get over the fact that I seem to be constantly hungry at the moment and am really struggling to keep to my 1000 calorie a day limit. It's particularly a problem during the mornings, something which is quite new to me as in the past I have always got hungry in late afternoon and evening. I'll keep you posted.