This weekend it became clear to me that I've hit a point that a lot of people seem to hit in their post-WLS experiences: I'm more confident, more outgoing, more up for adventures and parties and socializing of all kinds. That feels awesome, and I love it, and also it means that I'm more often eating chaotically, drinking a bunch, skipping water, and not logging my food. Which is...not great. This weekend I was on the go from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening—networking with colleagues, catching up with friends, seeing family, going dancing...and also drinking, snacking, and not planning my food or really keeping particularly careful track of it. If this is going to continue to be a trend, and it might, the current way I'm dealing with it is not going to be adequate. 

So how do I adapt?

One thing that makes things tricky is that my surgery is not common knowledge, and even with the people who know, I seem to have a tendency to want to downplay it, like I'm afraid that emphasizing it will make me feel like I don't belong. So I'm wondering if maybe heads-upping trusted folks beforehand might be one way of making this a little easier. Yes, that's hard for me to do, but my friends have been coming through for me like champions, and my fears about what they'll think of me have been consistently unfounded—so hard doesn't mean impossible.

One thing I did RIGHT this weekend was that when I got back to Brooklyn, my boyfriend came over and was like "want to order takeout?" And I was like, "nope. I want to eat something that I can log accurately, that isn't packed with sodium, and that will make me feel stable before the week begins." Which is not EXACTLY what I said, because I hate being That Girl whose sense of safety in the world is dependent on eating within particular parameters, but, it is in fact exactly what I did. So that was a good thing. I need to honor my own impulse towards a sense of order as opposed to overriding them. And I might need to talk to him about offering me wine (and takeout!). 

I think the major obstacle here is self-consciousness. I don't like rocking the boat, or drawing attention to myself, ESPECIALLY when that's about what I am or am not eating. But I seem to be overestimating the degree to which I can make good choices in chaotic environments right now. It's not a problem YET, but I can see it becoming one down the line, and I want to nip it in the bud.

I'm brainstorming, but not coming up with anything brilliant right now. I'd really be glad if you could share your experience with this, and how you addressed it! The thinking stuff especially—like, I know that I can pack string cheese, but that doesn't seem to get me over the hump of the awkwardness of pulling string cheese out of my bag when everyone else is being a normal, flexible, hedonistic human being. For me, as always, it's more about the mental than the pragmatic. How did you reorient your thinking around this stuff?