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.

June 2nd, 2016 — Week 3
[230 lbs]
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 1st 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.