180 Degree Turnaround

I'm still here. I'm not quite sure why I dropped off the radar after my surgery. I thought I'd have so much to say, want to document everything I experienced. Nope! For some reason, my journey has felt incredibly personal, very introspective. I really haven't felt like I wanted to blog about anything. But today, for whatever reason, I do. :)

So, to get me back into the swing of things, a List Of Things I've Experienced:

1. BY THE NUMBERS -- my weight this morning: 180.8 lbs! That's down 49 lbs. from my top weight of 229 when I started with my bariatric program, and 39 lbs. since the date of my surgery (Sept. 14). In a few more pounds, I will go from obese to just overweight. :)

2. People are starting to make eye contact with me again. Give me a friendly smile. Guys hold doors for me. Offer me their seats in a crowded room. My husband thinks I'm just noticing it more now, or they are picking up on my newfound confidence, but...I'm pretty sure none of that happened very much when I was at my top weight.

3. I went bra shopping, and actually found one that mostly fits!

4. I tried on clothes in the regular size section, and some of them fit!

5. I feel like I can move so much easier.

6. I'm kind of surprised that the weight has come off this fast and this easily. I'm nine or ten weeks out and have lost about 2/3 of the weight I need to lose. I remember my first meeting with the surgeon, when he told me that with the VSG, I could expect to lose about 35 to 40 lbs. Less than 3 months in, I'm past that!

7. I'm pretty much worried all the time that I will stretch out my stomach. I have eaten more than I should a couple of times. It was SO uncomfortable those times, which is good since I don't ever want to get in the habit of letting that happen. I wonder at what point I can stop worrying about that -- if ever?

8. First Thanksgiving after bariatric surgery went pretty well. To be honest, I kind of did miss stuffing myself with good food, but given the choice between being chock-full of good food and all the above things (plus, you know, the whole 'being healthier' thing), I'll take all the above. :) And hopefully at some point, I won't miss big meals anymore. :) I was able to eat a couple of ounces of turkey with cranberry sauce and a bite or two of a couple of sides. I even had three bites of pumpkin pie later on, so I didn't feel deprived at all. I've always thought holidays were more about family than food, anyway, and I think that helps me come to terms with eating less holiday food. We'll see how Christmas goes in a few weeks!

9. Oh! And just about the only thing I've found that I absolutely do not like/can't eat are most powdered protein shakes. They are just so sickeningly sweet! For whatever reason, I can still drink the EAS AdvantEDGE shakes. Dairy products in general sometimes make my stomach gurgle and complain, but so far I can still eat them.

So anyway, that's me. Hope you're all doing well. :)

I have a date (and other news)!

Wednesday, September 14, 2011 -- a new hope!

That's the day I'll have my sleeve surgery. I can hardly believe after all this time, I actually have a date. It's actually going to happen -- and so soon! The whole process has been wait, wait, wait, and now everything is HURRY!

I start my liquid diet this Wednesday, and oddly enough, I'm almost more worried about that than I am about the surgery itself. I've discovered that I kind of have this irrational fear of being hungry. Isn't that weird? Or maybe it's that I fear that I can't handle any sort of hunger. I don't know! All I know is, I'm stressing the next couple of weeks.

[On a related note, what are your favorite protein drinks?]

Tomorrow, I have to have a stress test and an Upper GI. I can't have anything by mouth after midnight, and I don't even check in until 12:55 p.m. It'll be suppertime before I can eat or even have water. I am sweating this, too! I'm drinking as much as I can this evening, and I'm thinking of setting my alarm for 11:45 to have a protein shake and more water. So, we'll see how that goes.

Meanwhile, I got some unexpected news this past week -- I have cataracts and need surgery. I'm 43, y'all! Why is my body falling apart already? They wanted to go ahead and do them both before my sleeve surgery, but man, I just didn't think I could deal with it. I scheduled the first one for two weeks after my sleeve, and the other one for two weeks after that. On the upside, after the cataracts are out, I won't need glasses anymore, which is nice.

That's about it from here. Hope you're all doing well. :)

Gimme my exercise!

I've made an interesting discovery in the past three days -- since my knee flaked out on me and I was told to lay off exercising for a few days. What discovery was this?

I NEED EXERCISE.

In the past three days, in addition to sitting on my butt, I've slipped back into my old ways of eating, and, unfortunately, the weight I lost is already piling back on. I've felt almost constantly hungry -- ravenous to the point of distraction! And I'm pretty sure I'm still supposed to be at 219 when I see the surgeon a week from Tuesday.

So, my plan is this:

1. Back on two-protein shakes, one small meal per day. Limit snacks to fruit or sugar-free popsicle.
2. Get back on the recumbent bike -- but take it slower, and listen to my body. I'm hopeful that wearing the brace will limit irritation to the bursa.
3. Get out of the house and away from electronic distractions.

All right, body, we can do this. One foot in front of the other. :)

My fat apparently loves me.

For almost five weeks now, I've been on the two-protein-shakes-and-one-reasonable-meal diet that my bariatric m.d. suggested. I lost five or six pounds right off the bat. But now my weight isn't budging!

Yesterday, I had the two protein drinks, 1/4 cup of fat free cottage cheese, one container of greek yogurt and a peach during the day. For supper, we had grilled chicken (I ate two legs), one small piece (4 inches) of corn on the cob, and steamed broccoli. After supper, I had a chunk of watermelon and a suger-free popsicle. (I just remembered that I also had a tablespoon of peanut butter in the afternoon.)

I've exercised for five of the past seven days. Good, hard exercise that had me sweating profusely and out of breath. Thirty to 45 minutes at a time.

So why is my scale refusing to budge? I was briefly at 221.8 a few days ago, but since then it's bounced around from 223.8 to 225. I don't understand it!

I had hoped to be at 219 (my required five percent loss) by the time I go to my last nutrition class Thursday afternoon, but it doesn't look like that will happen. I don't know what I'm doing wrong! Maybe I need to go to three protein drinks per day just to get these last few pounds off.

Also, while I'm whining: I have a task to do at work that I despise, and I am procrastinating like whoa. ;)

Eep!

So, I watched a few seconds minutes of a laparoscopic roux-en-y surgery. Um. Owwie?

I'm not typically squeamish, but wow, watching that was a bad idea. I wish I could just get it over with already and not spend so much time obsessing over thinking about it.

Maybe it'll help to list some of the reasons (besides health, which is, of course, the main reason I want the surgery. In no particular order:

* I'd like to be able to fit into a bra. Seriously. Have you ever tried looking for a 42A bra? It doesn't exist -- well, it may exist, but the cups are waaaaay larger than what an A cup should be. I kinda got the short end of the stick in the boobular area. I started developing early -- I was the first girl in 3rd grade who had to wear a bra -- and stopped developing shortly afterward. And not to make mountains out of molehills (see what I did there?), but I didn't get the extra boobage you're supposed to get when you breastfeed, either. So, I got fat, but I didn't get the gazongas to go along with it. Which leads me to...

*I'd like to fit into clothing. If you wear plus-size clothes, you may have noticed that the shirts, in general, play up the boobs. I'm sure I'd like it, if I actually had any boobs to play up. Instead, when I put on plus-size tops, I look like a little kid playing with her mama's clothes. So, I mostly wear shell tops in warm weather (I currently have five that I rotate over and over and over again) and twinsets in cold weather. Nothing else fits.

*I'd like to not feel crowded in our shower stall. I'm forever bumping my elbows, or brushing the cold shower walls with my butt-ticular area. And I end up having to step sideways out of the stall to get through the door without bumping jiggly bits.

*I'd like to not feel tired all the time, or out of breath when I walk a block from my car to the office. That's actually getting better since I started working out on my recumbent bike! I want to feel well enough to pursue my goal of becoming a nurse.

*I want to like people looking at me again. Now, I can't stand to look at myself in the mirror, so I guess I assume everyone else feels the same way.

*I'd like to feel like a normal person. That's not too much to ask, is it?

In less heavy (geddit???) news, I ordered some Nectar protein drinks on the suggestion of someone in my bariatric practice's support group. Who knew chocolate shakes were going to get old?

Review: Muscle Milk Light

A co-worker of mine who is working on gaining muscle definition sometimes drinks Muscle Milk, and I've been meaning to try it too, so I picked up a four-pack ready-to-drink in chocolate last night.

It's quite a bit more expensive than the EAS Advantedge Carb Control shakes I've been drinking, but it had a few less calories. And I expected it to taste great, given the cost.

WRONG! I've heard people describe certain protein drinks as tasting like monkey ass -- well, now I know what they mean. The taste was just awful. Yes, it's chocolate, but even a confirmed chocoholic like myself has to draw the line at chocolate-covered monkey ass. Yuck!

So, now I'm stuck with three containers of monkey ass.

This is why I hesitate to buy anything new without sampling it first. Which reminds me -- why don't health food stores, GNCs, etc., hold taste-testings so we'll know what we're getting before we invest $40 in a container of powdered monkey ass? The GNC person I spoke with yesterday tried to sell me some Wheybolic something-or-other. "If you don't like it, you can return it for up to 30 days," she said. Well, that's great, but I KNOW ME. I am the Queen of Procrastination, y'all. That carton of monkey ass would be sitting untouched in the back of my pantry for the next 11 years, before I finally get ashamed enough to throw it out.

*ahem* All righty, then. Today, I'm planning to hit up Wally World and see what they have, and hopefully also order a few samples (even if they are insanely overpriced) online.

Have a great one!