If you want to live a healthy lifestyle it’s imperative to dump your unhealthy habits. It’s easy to develop bad habits. It’s hard to change our bad habits and once changed even harder to maintain the good ones.  Kevin had an experience this past Friday he wishes to not repeat. He was excited to have his first round of blood work since his surgery in the hopes his A1C levels were down to less than 5.7%; aka normal meaning his diabetes is in full remission. Since his surgery he has discontinued all his diabetes medications and his daily blood sugar levels have been normal. This is the good news, great actually.

However, on Friday his excitement soon turned to dread. His blood work consisted of fasting that morning. I knew if he didn’t eat he would crash. I suggested he take a protein drink with him to the lab so he could get something in his stomach after the blood draw. He said, “Yep that’s what I was planning to do.” I replied, “Cool!”  Needless to say, he forgot his protein drink! Not a good idea. By the time he arrived home it was after 10 a.m. He was in a hurry to log back into his computer for work, but he was starving. He quickly grabbed a protein drink and in a matter of less than a minute downed it! He was still feeling hungry after the protein drink and ate a spoonful or two of cottage cheese. Which was a very big NO, NO! His brain said, “I can do this, eat fast, eat standing up, and eat on the run. I know what I’m doing.” His new stomach disagreed, and said, “Oh, what did I just do? I feel sick!” Houston we had a major problem!

We were reminded at every doctor appointment the consequences of keeping the old habits of shoving food down, eating while standing, and eating on the run. The doctor looked him in the eye and said, “You will never eat the same again. You can never put too much all at once in your stomach or it will cause a dumping syndrome.” Dumping syndrome is when you put too much in your stomach at once and it all comes back up, and you dump what you’ve just eaten. He’s been reminded to take it slow and enjoy his food. He is still eating puree food until July 1^st so his stomach is still relatively new. He can’t do what he did with his “old” stomach as what he’s doing with his “new” stomach. When I arrived home from work and saw he looked a bit green I asked, “Are you ok?” He said, “No. I just got a taste dumping syndrome.” His stomach hurt, it was too full, he was vomiting, and some heaving for about 1-2 hours. He realized his old habits of grabbing food and downing it was no longer an option.

Old habits are hard to break.   The brain says, “Go ahead. It will be ok You’ve done this before.” But the body says, “Hey, you have a new stomach and it’s not ok.” If you want to make changes you have to follow all the rules. Rule number 1: Eat slowly. Rule number 2: Eat at the table sitting down. Rule number 3: Eat small amounts, and rule number 4: remember your protein drink before leaving the house for lab work. Dumping the old habits are not fun, but you can learn to retrain your brain and implement good eating habits.  Your health is the key to life’s riches.