192; Eating Out After Surgery

So this month marks 2 years since Pete had his gastric band and a year since I had mine.  I'll have updates from us both later this month.

But I want to talk about eating out.  In reality we don't eat out that much anymore.  Partly because we cut back when Pete was on unemployment, partly because we have a pup to come home to and let out and partly because it's tricky to order after surgery.

First of all I don't even want to discourage anyone from having any surgery to help with weight loss.  It's a tool that I choose to use.  Certainly if it was a wonder surgery I'd be 150 pounds by now.  Clearly, at 190 and struggling, it's not.  But there are aspects of life that you have to change after you have surgery.  Eating out is one of them.  At least for me.

When Pete had his surgery, our plan on eating out was that we'd split an entree and an appetizer.  This way we got enough food for both of us and enough of a choice/variety for both of us.  But then I had my surgery and our amount of food was even less, we decided that for the most part, we'd be splitting meals out.  Now that's not to say that we don't ever each order a whole meal, it happens sometimes.  Then we have a lot of leftovers.  It's always a dance over who chooses what.  But Pete is a gentleman and usually lets me choose, as long as it's something that he would eat too.

But there are issues.  As we've found out, nothing is ever without issues.  There are times that restaurants are hesitant allowing us to split a meal.  We have to explain that we both have surgery and can't finish the whole meal.  Some of them will then actually split the beautiful plate so that we each enough half the meal.  Some will refuse to split the plate and Pete and I eat off the same plate.  How romantic, right?  LOL  And still other places charge a split plate fee.  Anywhere from $5-$10.  At times the fee is almost as much as another entree; in those cases we just order a second entree and plan on lots of leftovers.

To be honest, I understand that in the more expensive restaurants we are playing with their presentation.  However, at the chain places, it shouldn't be that big of a deal - nothing is really artfully arranged.  So at times it again feels like we are penalized.  Before it was paying more for larger sizes of clothes, now it's more to eat less food.  Penalty.

I have to say that my dream eating out meal is a burger.  But it's not happened for me.  Maybe that's why I still dream of it?  There is nothing like a burger out with all the stuff on it that I don't keep at home and all the sauces and cheese that I can fit on it.  The issue for me is that I can't eat the burger with the bun.  The textures of the two are so different that it gets stuck.  So I avoid that.  But then the burger is sometimes really dry with the stuff taken off.  So then it gets stuck too.  A homemade burger isn't the same and I can't really recreate it.  So as of today, my dream meal out is a juicy burger with fries!