Weigh In Day

Post-Thanksgiving Weigh In. . . .

225.8

That's what I weighed Thanksgiving morning and I've held steady these past three days. Considering how (and what) I've been eating, I'll take it gladly without complaint. I think that puts me down 9lbs since the start of the challenge.


So, on Facebook today, I looked through some pictures of a friend of mine who had bypass early this year. Amazing! I'm very happy for her. It does make me happy that people actually have choices today and that the right surgery for my friend might not be the right surgery for me, etc.

As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly. . .

My husband and I live several states away from our families, and since he has to work pretty much the whole weekend every year, we never go "home". So Thanksgiving is just the two of us, and is very often unconventional since we aren't about to do a Turkey for two (and I'm not a humongous fan of turkey anyway). Last year we made linguine carbonara. This year we are doing more traditional than usual, with a small sliced ham, potatoes of death, pumpkin pie, and rolls. I'll probably have a little of everything but the bread.

I'm sure there will be football on at the house. There is no escaping it. But, I also make sure to always watch my own Thanksgiving television favorites. Here they are to share with you:

Friends-- The One Where Ross Got High has the funniest 30-seconds on television in my opinion. There's food that tastes like feet and Jacques Cousteau, and I absolutely love it.

WKRP in Cincinnati- Turkey Drop . Hilarious, that's all.

Things I'm Thankful For:

A great marriage to a man who is my best friend
My puppy dergs
I have a job when so many people don't
I have a standing job offer, so there's always a "next thing" just in case
I'm healthy and getting healthier every day


I hope all of you have a great day tomorrow, I really do. Don't be too hard on yourselves, no matter what.

Tricksy, Tricksy Exercise

So, I'm taking a page out of Joey's book, and I'm going to trick myself into exercising by setting an Apple product as my reward.

I've wanted to switch from PC to Mac for a while. I can't decide if I want a MacBook or an iMac, but either way, I'm going to make myself EARN that sucker rather than just paying for it. I have a feeling I'm going to need to save my cash for a tummy tuck eventually anyway ;)

So here's my plan: For every mile of exercise, I earn $2. That should require, at bare minimum, 500 miles of exercise.

Since my biggest issue since surgery is shear laziness when it comes to moving my ass, this seems like a good bargain to make with myself. I bought a really nice LiveStrong treadmill-- my husband uses it several times a week but I haven't stepped on it in a good month. For Christmas I bought him a spinning bike, so that treadmill is going to be lonely if I don't get my butt on it. I think this incentive might do the trick.

Holiday Challenge weigh in today: I am at 227.4, and I'm happy enough with that considering the half-bottle of wine I drank last night.

Just Call Me Support Group Sally

In about an hour I'll be heading off to my second support group of the week.

This week, my doc's office had their support group and I went to it for the first time. I didn't say much, but I found it pretty helpful. We had someone come from Bariatric Advantage to do a vitamin talk.

Confession: I do not regularly take my vitamins. It took me two months to get through a 30 day supply of multivitamins. Ahem. Bad, bad bandster.

So, support group got me recommitted to doing my supplements. I will be so embarrassed if I get my first set of post-op blood work back and I have earned a vitamin lecture.

Today's support group is actually the one I've been to before, and it's with another surgeon's (in a different hospital!) practice. They say it's open to anyone, but last time the nurse who serves as the coordinator looked less than welcoming. The people were great though, and they are having a plastic surgeon talk about reconstruction of skin after weight loss, so I'm going to brave Nurse Prissy's cold looks and go again. Plus, they have the best RTD protein shakes with 35g of protein that they sell that I haven't been able to find anywhere else.

In other news, my TOM must have done something nice to my band and it's sticking around past TOM. I felt the "no hungry/full on a little" really kick in last week and I'm still there, feeling full on very little food and not hungry between meals. The band, it works in mysterious ways. Now I'm really glad my doc said no fill this last visit.

Finally!

Yesterday I had two experiences:

1. Coworker who I see daily has been bragging to me about her own weight loss and gets in a discussion with me about it. I say that I have also lost weight doing low carb (which is technically true). She asks how much, I demur, she pushes, I tell her 60 pounds. She literally gives me the once over, head to toe, completely surprised. I wanted to laugh but I refrained. I'm not sure she believed me.

2. Last night, I go to a recruiting event to schmooze parents. The Dean of Admissions, whom I've met many many times, introduces herself to me on the way in the door, clearly thinking I was a guest and not a faculty member. I let it go. Later, she walks up to me and profusely apologizes to me because she did not recognize me! She told me I was looking good and I told her she was forgiven. This is literally the first person who has really seemed to see a difference and comment on it, in the most flattering of ways. After my full body once-over earlier, it felt really really good.


I go in for fill #2 this afternoon. I am sort of dreading it. Not that the experience is bad or anything, but I've never had a bad moment with my band (stuck, pain, etc.)and I'm so afraid I'm going to start having these experiences with a tighter band and ruin the good thing I've got going. I am probably eating more than I "should", but I'm steadily losing so as of right now, I feel like I'm ok. I know I will need adjustments to keep losing past a certain point, but I'm unsure if I should leave things well enough alone for now and then get fills when I get to a major plateau, or whether I should just do adjustments now. I will definitely go in today and get a fill, but I think I'll probably just leave it there for a while until I feel like I need a third.

That's my plan, anyway.

Update: No fill after all! He thinks I'm doing fine without it for the moment so my next appt. is in January. I had my first fluoroscopy so I got to see my band and port. Dude, the port is huge! But everything looked good.

Oh, the Pressure

Thanks to the gals who kicked my cookie-loving butt. You're all right. I can have a cookie and still lose. My treacherous brain is defeated for the time being.

So here's a weird health effect of surgery I've never heard of before-- every time I've had my blood pressure taken since surgery, it is higher than average. Today it was 142/86. Yet again, higher than my average pre-surgery bp. And borderline high blood pressure, which I've NEVER had weighing 60lbs more than I do now.

Has anyone else ever heard of this?

No?

Freak of nature, then?

Gotcha.

The Great Cookie Conundrum

Yesterday, in my excitement over hitting the under-230 mark, I babbled about weight loss with my husband. Kinda like a teenage girl. He humored me well. One of the things that came up was the upcoming holidays and my worries that I would get stuck with weight loss. Maybe even, *gasp*, gain. See, this time last year I had taken off a modest 30'ish lbs doing Atkins in the summer and had kept it off, not doing Atkins, in the fall. This was during my pre-op supervised diet and I had just found out (after completing it), that my work plan specifically prohibited WLS. Big downer. But, I kept it off.

Until Christmas, when I began the not so slow process of gaining it all back.


Dun, dun, dun.

See, at Christmas, I bake sugar cookies. Big, fat, cookie-cutter sugar cookies with buttercream icing. Lots of it. We like it thick around here (that's what she said). I can't even find a picture online that adequately reflects the icing to cookie ratio of my cookies.

These are my husbands favorite things EVER. He seriously will eat a dozen a day if I let him. (Aside: Tell me how it's fair that he isn't overweight-- you should see what he can do to a box of Krispy Kremes). So I find it hard to imagine that I will deny him the pleasure of sugar cookies this year just because I can't have them.

This hits at my big mental block with weight loss: the unfairness of denying myself life's pleasures. See, I know that I put too much emphasis on food as a my primary life pleasure-- I get it. That's why I'm obese. But sometimes it is really hard for me to care. I don't get equating eating good tasting food with some immorality or personal failure. I don't think fat people are failures at life and there is part of me that says I'm going to die of something, so why not obesity?

YEAH, I KNOW.

Clearly, when I made the decision to get the band, I decided that I was going to force myself to find *other* life pleasures. Honestly, I think I'm failing at that right now. I've been busier than usual with work and I find myself, when I'm not working, just sleeping or getting ready to sleep. This blog is as big I hobby as I have at the moment. Shopping for clothes probably comes in a big second, and honestly, I need to cut that out for a while.

This entire process is 90% a mental battle, and 10% a battle with the body. Can I make it through this holiday season without binging on sugar cookies, or potatoes of death (my name for scalloped potatoes- hello butter, cream, and cheese)? Yes I can. I've had holidays before during my life when I "dieted" and denied myself. But will I go the rest of my life like that? Nope. So I've got to figure out how to make this time different.

In perhaps related news, I get my second fill this week. Maybe once my band kicks in this will feel different than the usual diet.

New Numbers

Confession: I am a daily weigher. Keeps me on track and so far I'm not obsessive about it-- I don't worry about daily fluctuations as long as they always bounce up *and* down and not just up.

I had my first fill the last week of October-- barely any at all (1.5 in a big band). I went in to my fill around 234 and stayed there until earlier this week. I've finally started dropping again and today was in the 220's (229) for the first time in I don't even remember how long. I couldn't stop beaming-- I don't know what it was about the 220's but it felt like a bit of milestone to me for some reason.

Tomorrow is the official Holiday Challenge weigh in day, but today felt amazing.

Don't Kill the Messenger

I'm tired of thankless jobs. In my line of work, that means administrative committee work.

I hate doing it, but for some reason I'm an admin favorite and I get tapped to serve on all kinds of committees that do nothing but suck my time and energy, all for the pleasure of invariably being the bearer of bad news to my colleagues at large. Or at least that's what you'd think, based on the amount of bitchiness I get thrown back at me.

What I want to do is tell the complainers that I'll happily give up my committee position to them if they think they can do better-- a proposition I can guarantee no one would actually want to take me up on. What I do instead is bite my tongue until it bleeds and placate, placate, placate.

Urgh. Just had to vent.

Revenge of the Back

I spoke too soon yesterday, and my back apparently got pissed. Pissy little bitch, my back. Last night and today it is giving me trouble to the point of flexaril consumption. I'm eying my feet now. They better not try anything on me.

Weight loss is so weird, ya'll. I've been stuck at 234 since my first fill. Today, I get on the scale and I'm 230.8.

This is after last night, when I did my first full-tilt planned cheat. Went to dinner with the girls, had a Swedish Gimlet, some coconut tofu soup, and FRIED calamari. FRIED calamari in sweet and sour sauce, folks. Then I topped it all off with three tiny bites of seven-layer bar.

So apparently my body is just messing with me. I think there's a conspiracy.

**Note on pic: Apparently, only thin attractive naked women have back pain, as these were the only images I could find.


In other news, apparently the world will end in 20 years, brought on by the female species.

Goals

Some of you gals have been posting about goals lately, and you've got me thinking. How dare you!

My surgeon and I have never set a goal weight together-- honestly, I doubt it will happen unless I bring it up. The office is good with requiring aftercare but it is very business-like. In and out kinda stuff-- I probably spend about 5 minutes total time with the medical staff including nurse. But I have spent some time considering my personal weight goals and I've got numbers in mind.

The Numbers

1)Under 200: I've said all along that if I can get under 200 and stay there for the rest of my life, then my health and quality of life will have improved enough that the surgery will have been a great success, even if I stay at 199.

2)170: This is the "I weigh less than my husband" weight, and would be a giddy, yay me goal.

3)150: This is my ultimate "dream" goal-- it would put me in the normal BMI range (just barely, but still!). This one is a little harder to hope for, honestly, but I'll put it down just in case.

4)A NSV-Goal: I'd like to be able to shop in regular stores and be guaranteed that the largest size will always fit me well, even in clothes brands that tend to run smaller.

Good Things Already Accomplished:

1)For the most part, my foot pain (plantar fascitis) is gone.
2)I haven't felt a twinge out of my back for a couple of months!
3)I have grown out of almost all of my pre-surgery pants, in the right direction this time.
4)I actually weigh almost 30 lbs LESS than my driver's license says I do.
5)I haven't eaten fast food in 3 months.
6)Sex (it had to be said, again)

Holiday Challenge Day 1

I'm starting the challenge at 234.8 lbs.



I took my measurements this weekend. Let me say, I'm no tailor. My use of a tape measure is highly suspect. But, definitely seeing some inches gone since August.

Bicep: 15 (-2)
Breasts: 47 (-4)
Ribs (i.e. under boobs): 40 (-6)
Top Roll (i.e. waist): 49 (-4)
Bottom Roll: 50 (no comparison)
Hips: 50 (-6)
Thigh: 27.5 (-2.5)

Sequins & Studs

Bittersweet moment this morning as I was getting ready to go out-- it's finally cold enough for a jacket here and I pulled out my green cordoroy Land's End coat. It's 22W, and last winter it was a touch on the small side so I didn't wear it. Apparently, I won't be wearing it anymore because it's not just too big, it looks too big.

Goodbye, pretty green jacket. (Let me know if you want it- I would love to send it to a good home)




But, hello sequins and studs! Apparently, I was feeling flashy and maybe a little drag today because I came home with two sequined tank tops and a pair of black leather heals with studs in them. (These may not be the first sequined clothes to recently be added to my closet, either. I may be having issues with shiny things. Keep me away from jewelry stores).





My husband noticed that the shirts were 14/16 and made me feel really good with his excitement. I think he realizes how bummed I've been to still be at 234 after my first fill-- weight loss stall and bandster hell extraordinaire.

Thanks Gen!

My many thanks to Gen for bringing all of the new friends my way.

This is for all of you:

On the DL

I think one of my students had WLS. Of course we all know it's not something you just go around asking people, and considering I haven't told many people and am covering my face on pictures so my students don't have easily downloaded fat pics of me (without a face, there's no proof!), it would probably be a bit hypocritical to ask.

But in any case, good for her. She's looking great and she's going to have the energy to go with her vivacious personality.