What Goes Down...

...must come up.

Or, alternatively titled: "A Sucker Punch from Tim Gunn: No Longer a PB Virgin"

So.

Sooooooooo.

Yeah.

If you haven't guessed by now, I PBed at lunch today.

Nope. Not this. 

For those of you who read my blog who aren't banded - allow me to present to you a crash course in Bandster Vocabulary 101:

Stuck: When you eat the wrong types of food and/or eat too fast and/or take too big of bites and/or don't chew thoroughly enough, food literally gets stuck in the small banded space in your stomach and can't/wont go through. For me, this feels like some serious pressure in my chest, bubbling up into my esophagus and throat. It makes it difficult for me to breathe and talk. Being stuck leads to "sliming".

Sliming: After getting food significantly stuck in your band, your body automatically starts creating copious amounts of saliva in order to aid the process of making the food move in one of two directions. For me, this process also contributes to making it difficult to talk, as saliva starts collecting and I feel the need to spit or swallow. (Yes, I can hear all the twelve-year-old boys snickering.) Stuck + Sliming can lead to the dreaded PB.

PB: Stands for "Productive Burp" and is the technical term for when you throw up food that has entered your pouch and/or gotten stuck in your band. Technically, a PB is not actually throwing up, because the food never makes it into your real stomach to get digested. A technicality that I didn't really understand until today.
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There's no getting around it. It was totally my fault. The trifecta of eating the wrong kinds of foods (hot dog/hot dog bun/shredded cheese), eating too quickly (I wanted to get to a crochet project that I've been slaving away at), and not chewing thoroughly enough (see "eating too quickly".)

Since my 2nd fill, I've probably gotten truly stuck about four times. And when I do, it's because of all of the above reasons. Fortunately, I had been able to "work it out" each of those previous times, and the food went down instead of coming back up. Not today, my friends.

I will spare you the gory details except to say that apparently it was the shredded cheese that did me in. Because that's what came back up, still looking remarkably like shredded cheese. (Gross, I know.) I think I was just eating it too fast and not chewing it up well enough, so it kind of just compacted and congealed into a big ol' ball that made my band it's home. O.U.C.H.

A couple of days ago, I was finally able to get a fill scheduled for this Saturday. And I know that when I go there and answer my little questionnaire, I'm going to have to tell them that I've gotten stuck four times and PBed once. On paper, that doesn't exactly look like I need a fill, but the thing is, I know I need one. I know I'm not in the green zone. I think I'm close, but I'm still able to eat way too much when I'm doing things the right way. I'm hoping I'll be able to explain all that to Kim on Saturday, too.

It's just so much harder to do the whole "mindful eating" thing than I think I was expecting it to be. It requires true diligence and focus. It's frustrating to know that being stuck and PBing can generally be prevented and that I do it to myself. I really need to remember that more often, because I don't really want to do this whole PBing thing again. It was totally no fun.

That Tim Gunn really knows how to sock it to a girl!