I ate dinner out for the first time since being banded on Friday night. I ate dinner out Saturday night with one of my brothers, who doesn't know I am banded.

Beau wanted Johnny Rockets Friday night. At first I said no...what would I eat there? But then I recalled that they had egg salad and tuna salad sandwiches and figured I could just ask for a scoop of one of them. So I got a scoop of egg salad. It was at least a cup. DH got a chocolate milkshake and that was impossible to resist. I ate a fourth of it with a spoon (good thing, too, as the whole shake is 1,000 calories -- no, ice cream/milkshakes are not going to be a regular part of my diet). Then I ate about a third of the egg salad and I was done.

Saturday night my brother and I (he lives about two hours away so I went to visit him) ate at a restaurant I'd been to before so I knew what to order. We got crabcakes as an appetizer and I ate one. Then as my entree I had a few slices of tuna dipped in soy sauce, a tablespoon or so of seaweed salad and probably about that much of flying fish roe. The plate had rice on it but I didn't eat any of it. Since I was using chopsticks, it was easy to eat slowly. No issues at all. Later than night we got coffee. Not that hard to get a fat-free latte with sugar-free syrup. He got a brownie too and tried to get me to split it with him but I wouldn't, of course.

Sunday morning, we had breakfast in a vegetarian restaurant. I got scrambled eggs with cheese and grits. Here we had a problem. The grits were incredibly hot, and when I took a bite, I realized that they were way too thick and dry (I'm used to them being more wet and soupy). So I ended up barely eating any of them although they tasted good. I was too afraid of getting them stuck. That one bite hurt a little going down and that was all I needed to know. The scrambled eggs were great, though, and I ate about half of them.

I know my brother wasn't suspicious about the dinner, but I'm pretty sure that he was with breakfast. He's used to seeing me clean my plate every time I eat. I did have a little coughing fit during breakfast (I have a cold) and he asked me if that turned my appetite. I said yes.

It'll definitely be tricky to eat dinner with people who don't know. But I think it'll be easier once I'm further along in what I can eat.