On March 27th, I ate a Dave’s Double, a large fry, a small frosty, a spicy chicken sandwich, and 6 spicy nuggets from Wendy’s. That was my last meal, because since then, I have only eaten 2 protein shakes a day. For the past couple weeks I’ve been working in a little bit of solid food, but I’m talking like a single grilled chicken nugget’s worth of solid food a day. I’ve also still been recovering from my back surgery in January and finishing a 15 month long board game design project that will go to Kickstarter in July. But I’m getting ahead of myself – this is Summer 2025’s State Of The Alex.

Alright so on March 28th I started my bariatric pre-op diet, which was two protein shakes (320 calories), a string cheese, jello cup, hard boiled egg, and one frozen meal under 300 calories with more protein than carbs. That had me around 800 calories a day, so not quite as restrictive as JUST protein shakes. The first couple days were easy. I distracted myself with video games, television, what have you. On the third day I started really feeling it, both mentally and physically. I started thinking that it’d be easier to cancel the surgery than avoid having a slice of pizza. It’d be easier to throw away an entire year of attending the bariatric pre surgical program and getting a surgery date, than say no to a cheeseburger. This mentality lingered for DAYS! There exist many timelines where I said fuck it and ate ice cream. But I got through that first major mental roadblock and surrendered myself to being miserable. I like to believe that I have the mental strength to force myself to basically anything, and this had to have been one of the toughest challenges to that belief. Week 2 was spent existing like a human slug – no energy, no will to live, just scroll youtube, drink protein, eat cold egg and die.

On April 11th my wife hauled my ass to the hospital and I waited like a sack of bones for someone to anesthetize me and get this gastric bypass over with. Just get me unconscious already so I can stop thinking about food! As I was wheeled back to the OR, the nurse told me they were all prepped for my gastric SLEEVE. I asked her to repeat that, the anesthetist started introducing myself and I felt the pinch of the needle go into my hand. I said “bypass, not sleeve.” The nurse said “what?” I pointed to a second nurse and asked “what’s the procedure?” She said gastric bypass. I gave a thumbs up. That was the last thing I remember before waking up 4 hours later.

Everybody I’ve talked to who got this surgery says that it feels like the beginning of a new life. I can confirm, coming off the anesthesia felt like getting rebirthed – confusing, painful, disorienting, gross, and I cried a lot. I’ve always been great coming off anesthesia but it was a serious challenge this time because in order to do the surgery, they fill your chest cavity with CO2. That shit HURTS. FOR DAYS. The only way to deal with it is to walk as much as possible, so you could catch my ass waddling through the recovery unit every hour until I couldn’t stay awake anymore. Oh yeah, also they made six incisions through my abdominal wall, so it wasn’t exactly a breeze to sit, stand, or lay down.

For the first two weeks, I was on protein shakes and water only. I ordered a bunch of premier shakes for the pre-op diet, but you can imagine that they were getting pretty old already. This time, instead of drinking them in like four gulps, I could only drink one ounce of liquid every seven minutes. That means it takes 2 hours to finish a protein shake. Plus I had to get at least an additional 24 fluid ounces of water in, which is another like 4 hours of drinking at a minimum. The “food is medicine” mentality had to set in early. Not to mention, that super restrictive 800 calorie diet pre-surgery was now down to 400 calories. Miraculously though, the surgery takes away the sensation of hunger for like up to a year. It doesn’t get rid of the psychological aspect of hunger, however, and that would turn out to be a doozy. A few days into recovery, I started getting radically strong and unfocused cravings. I’d want a peanut butter cheeseburger, no an Indian food pizza, no a bowl of cereal and a bowl of ramen…it was unbearable. But I had a counterintuitive, some might say really really stupid, idea. I started exclusively watching cooking content. My theory was that I’d already trained my brain to ignore cravings for things I was watching, because otherwise I’d order five doordash orders whenever I binged cooking videos. Plus, the videos would make me crave only the thing on the screen instead of the craving hose waving wildly, spraying cravings juice all over my brain mind. As usual, people think I’m crazy but it worked out. I got through the worst of the craving spells in the first couple weeks.

In the following 3 weeks up to this point, I’ve mostly been coasting. My body hasn’t entirely adjusted to the super low calorie count, but having small amounts of solid foods like lean ground beef, stewed veggies, and shredded chicken has helped. My food addiction has been laid bare before me; I honestly can’t believe how strongly I was leaning on the fast dopamine from eating junk food. I’m still figuring out how to get that dopamine some other way, but I’ve made real progress in the effort to sever myself from those old habits. Oh, and I’ve lost 45 pounds so far, which is cool too.

Of course, life doesn’t pause just so I can get my shit together. I’ve been finalizing assets, prepping social media posts, coordinating marketing materials, and dodging crazy tariff news in order to launch my board game, Notebook Nations, on Kickstarter in July. It’s wild how much work goes into a launch like this. When I was doing Power Generation in 2024, I thought it was a heavy lift but it’s nothing compared to the way they do it in the big leagues. If you want to see the first bits of the campaign, we have a landing page at notebooknations.duxsomnium.com where you can sign up to follow our progress towards launch. Board games never sleep, so I’m already knee deep into our next two projects, but I’m very proud to see this one nearing publication. The first time I talked about that project was here on DFO, back when I was calling it Tiny Conflicts. I did a devlog here, too!

It ended up looking really good I think. I’d like to do more devlogs for my board game projects in the future. Fingers crossed that after the two most tumultuous years of my life, I’ll finally experience what it’s like to post consistently. Yeah, yeah, I hear you, but I can dream, ok??