Back on solids - or am I? Part one

I officially went back onto solids after my fifth fill at lunchtime on Wednesday 13th May. I had been quite 'good' on this occasion and stuck to fluids and mush for the requisite three days each. On Wednesday I decided to stay safe and ate some 'soft' solids - if you see what I mean. I ate a pasta salad with prawns, followed by some slices of ripe mango. Later in the evening I ate more pasta (a bit harder this time) with leeks, mushrooms, cottage cheese and tuna. That all went down fine, so the next day, Thursday, I decided to 'test' my band restriction with some quite 'firm' solid foods at lunch time. A trip to Sainsbury was again in the offing, and I selected a tuna bean salad. This consisted of a mixture of broad beans and soya beans, both of which were quite firm, plus some raw green beans and tuna. OK, I admit I had to eat a little more slowly than the day before, but it all went down at such a pace that any bystander would just think I was a slightly slow eater.

After this I confess to being a little disappointed and beginning to get dispondent about my band. It seemed to me then, that I had got through the fluid and mush stages only to find that solids were going down just as easily as they ever did!? When was I ever going to get to that stage that so many other bandits seem to be at - where they can only eat a tiny piece of x, y or z before feeling stuffed? Well, that was last Thursday - things have moved on a bit since then......

On Friday, my other half and me went off to Moffat in Scotland for the weekend to celebrate his 'special' birthday. Anxious to ensure I wasn't going to get hungry on the journey (the ol' fat gene is still there y'know!), I made myself a hearty breakfast of one egg, scrambled, one piece of toast lightly smeared with low fat margarine and half a small tin of baked beans. The egg and beans went down fine but I could only manage a couple of bites of the toast - which to be honest, with the beans on top, had turned into a soggy orange mush! So, I ate what I could and resigned the rest to the bin. Then at lunch time, taken at a motorway service station, I bought a cheese salad sandwich - nothing like being an optimist eh? To be fair, it went down OK - eventually - it took about an hour and a half to eat one sandwich!!! I can recall times in the past where about one and a half minutes would have sufficed!

That evening we ate out in a restaurant. I had already decided beforehand that I was going to have a soup for starter - I thought that ought to go down without touching the sides. I was going to follow that up with a small main course or a starter. In the event, the only soup available was for carnivores only so I opted for a melted goats cheese starter instead. I really enjoyed that - and it went down fine. The only problem was, by the time I had finished eating this tiny piece of melted cheese (well, at least it was melted when I started - by the time I finished it was completely solid again!) - I was stuffed!! I still had salmon and potatoes to come......... read on tomorrow............