First week: A banana and the treadmill.

I have now had my braces for one full week. All has been going swimmingly in terms of pain or discomfort. My teeth feel fine. My head and jaw feel fine. My lips and the insides of my mouth aren't too damaged. I don't know if this pain-free existence is due to only having braces on one arch, opting for the ceramic braces, or because I have such a high pain tolerance. Ha. I doubt it's the latter reason.

I went to the gym for the first time since getting these on. I ran three miles on the treadmill and nothing adverse happened. The only bummer is that now when my mouth is dry, my lips can really catch on my brackets. Not a pretty sight, but I'm at the gym. I'm not trying to be pretty. The other fear that I ran into is trying to drink from a water bottle while running. Seems I'm fairly apprehensive to do this because I'm afraid of accidentally missing a step and jamming the bottle at my teeth and having something disastrous occur. I suppose this will lessen in time.

One big change for me has been the shake-up of my eating routine. I'm pretty rigid in this regard. I loved my oatmeal with walnuts. I loved having sandwiches for lunch. I ate apples and bananas nearly every day. Well I think I can still have the walnuts but I'll have to be careful to chop them up very fine. Sandwiches, unfortunately, are out. I suppose I might manage in the privacy of my home. But that's too much trouble and too much mess to deal with at work. Apples are out of my routine now. But I did eat a banana. I just broke it into pieces and shoved it towards the back of my mouth, so nothing would collect at the front of my teeth. Again, eating seems to be as much about aesthetics as about function.