Ugh ugh it's JUST a tool, a tool

I have been smacked with my new reality and it's name is hunger. I was told that I would eventually get my hunger back and it would be raging. I thought that I was lucky as it did not appear at the anticipated 6 month mark nor 7 months but I have now lost that battle. I am sadly just like everyone else who has WLS :::sigh::: human. The carb monster came first and I began to crave C.R.A.V.E carbs. I already had an appointment to see the nutritionist at the Dr.'s office so I went anticipating that she would have normal follow up questions for me and she surprised me by asking me why I came to see her. Huh? I uhmmm cause the Dr. told me to come I stated and started to feel a little foolish. However I continued I have been starting the carb cravings and think all hope is now lost (Okay something like that). I don't think she is really clued into the WLS surgery patient I think she is a regular nutritionist but not really in the loop. However she did suggest that I start eating a fruit like dried fruit or an apple mid morning and mid afternoon and those carbs/sugars in the fruit would slow down my carb fever. And they have been slowed down. So I am grateful. Still more hungry than I have been but it has taken the edge off.
I actually gained a few pounds before I got to this point I think 4 pounds which is a huge amount to me who still has more than 100 pounds to go. At 260 pounds I can see 300 pounds on the horizon if I am not careful. Looming in front of me is a Dr. appointment this Thursday so I have been aware of the deadline to get off the few pounds I lost because for sure they will weigh me and I will feel like the millions of WW meetings I have attended and a failure. I weighed myself about a week ago and was down 2 or 3 of the pounds I had gained but need to start on a regular basis the exercise so that I can integrate that into my daily life. Ugh. The surgery is just a tool darn it. Not a magic potion. I was holding out hope that it WAS a magic potion. Now I need to pay much more attention I think and stick with weigh-in's once a week and although I am not craving carbs as much as I was several weeks ago I need to pay attention to that monster and well... pay more attention. Ugh. Ugh drat! I was warned darn it!

Joy

I am now a pound or two more than 1/2 way to my initial goal weight. I woke up the other morning and for the 1st time in a long time felt absolute JOY. Joy in my chest... bursting out of my heart at the difference in my life this surgery has made already. I now have a chance! Life is again full of all opportunities or the possibility of most opportunities again!
The surgery has made possible so many positive things that I had forgotten about.
I am not alone with these absolutely amazing realizations I would bet I have lots of company in the WLS community. But this is my blog and It's mostly about ME, Me me!

Yes, Life still has complications and challenges. But I am having so many non-scale related positives:

To list a few:

1. Saturday I went shopping at 4 different places. or is that 5 ? I had no tiredness no exhaustion and it was so great I almost cried at the last store. I can DO IT AGAIN I can shop like an almost normal person!

2. I can get up if I fall down. One of my biggest fears has been the fear that if I fell I would not be able to get up unassisted. I can get up on my own now.

3. When I was at my heaviest I felt invisible. Not to children, but to adults. I am still very, very overweight (I am not kidding myself) however I am no longer invisible to adults. I even had a guy smile at me twice at the gas station the other day!

4. From the waist up I look good... from the waist down... uhmm not so much. But I can see an image of my former self... well with a chicken neck (Which I really need to GET OVER!)./

5. I have no problem getting into a booth at a restaurant anymore!

and the list goes on and on.

At this moment in time... life is good and getting better each day :)

7 months and a few days out

It's amazing how long it's been since February 9th until today. 31 weeks that's a LONGGGGGG time and it has been worth every single upset stomach & every single barf. I am almost to 1/2 way which if I was thinking about this a year ago (And I was) I would not have imagined actually getting here... uhm there (Whatever). I lost 4 pounds last week and have my 7th month appointment with the Dr. this Thursday where they said they will be taking blood tests for nutrient levels. I am curious what they will say. My big elephant legs are a concern to a couple of my friends. They (They being my legs she says in an oddly third person kinda way)... do not seem to be losing weight. My right leg however is smaller than my left by about two inches around the calf. I told them talk to me in another 100 pounds if my legs are still this big. They made me promise to talk to the Dr. about my legs. okay okay but we DO talk about my legs each time I go to see him. He is more concerned about how my legs will be flopping around after I lose weigh in them. Do they (They?) do plastic surgery on calves? I imagine so. Maybe like the 1930's when women wore hosiery with seams up the back heehehe Yeah like that is $10K that I want to use on calf plastic surgery. OHHHH please with this chicken neck? Any 10K can be spent on my chicken neck. Or the worlds largest inventory of turtlenecks from Lands End. I love those luxuriously combed cotton turtle necks from Lands End. Me and Kathryn Hepburn turtlenecks are awesome. Then I can spend $10k on travel.

Whoooo hoooo a small goal

Whoo yeah me... ! A small goal met when I weighed myself and was pleased to see 279 on the scale. I don't know why this was a goal but I remember this was what I weighed about 12 years ago. Now my next goal is to weigh what my drivers license says! That is another 19 pounds. At approx. 2 pounds a week that will be at about the 2nd week in November. I'll take it! Also another goal is to be a 50% weight loss which is about the same time which will be about 9 months post op.
I wrote earlier but think I never hit POST about feeling my hunger like a "normal" person feels. Feeling hungry is similar to what I used to feel like... almost. I do not have the never satisfied feeling that I used to feel in fact sometimes the feeling is "Oh dear ! I ate too much - huhooo" and wonder if it will stay down? But its kinda non issue... an inconvenience because it's not like I want to eat something... sometimes I think to myself. Come on you need to eat something soon. Right now It's 3:00PM and I have been hungry kinda for a while.. thinking I need to eat something but then I take a good sized gulp of water and I am good for another hour or so. Seeing that scale go down is rewarding. Being responsible for what I put into my mouth is the tough one... but you already knew that... right?

On a roll

Right now THIS is how I feel. Just had a glass of skim milk and feel like I want to urp it up. This is the 3rd time I have felt this way since surgery. No that's not true. At 1st I could tolerate milk and in the past several weeks the milk has not agreed with me. Am I becoming lactose intolerant? I heard that was a possible by product of surgery. Maybe I drank it too fast? Maybe too much? Today I actually had a "Smart Ones" Lasagna. I think it had 17 grams of protein which is great and 350 calories. Perfect since I forgot to eat breakfast (imagine THAT!). Ahhhhh 2 burps I feel a little better.

Food Just ain't "all that" anymore

It's the oddest thing... we were having a meeting during lunch today and someone asked me what I wanted, what I preferred. I eat so little of what is offered now, it really just doesn't matter. I kind of wanted Pizza and a salad, or BBQ Chicken. They wanted Chinese so I went to Eggface (The blogger) and looked up Chinese food to see what she had to say on Chinese food. She's post op a couple years and loves food so she is a good barometer. Egg foo yung or something else home made sounded great but what about take out? I ordered Beef Chow Mein. Took the meat out for my portion had a few noodles and all visible veggies. On a small paper plate that was maybe 1/2 to 3/4 of a cup.
It's just not fun anymore.. its boring. I am full and okay and can't eat anymore which is GREAT don't get me wrong. Sometimes I think this is how normal people feel. I am more and more convinced that there is something in the stomach that controls the hunger too, it's not just the brain, it's right there in the stomach. I am so different. I am so hesitant to eat almost anything now. It's really very good that I have these cautions. Is this how normal people feel about food? How they interact with food? Look at food? Am I normalizing? Wow wouldn't THAT be cool!
As of Monday I was down 76 post op (February 9, 2009) and 105 (!!) since August 2008. Cool Very Very Cool.

This is NOT a Race

I am back on track. I feel good. Had my 1st sugar rush yesterday and was kinda quaky all day and had too much unprotected sun. Did not intentionally eat sugar just too many carbs in the AM which i guess turned to sugar. I thought I was okay and was headed out to visit a work site but got shaky and sickly and weak but took a shower and was okay. I need to mix protein in with a carb. So this morning I had string cheese and a graham cracker. That was fine. Not really testing myself anymore hopefully that was just a phase. Am 302 today and want to be under 300 sooo bad and then 279 which is what I was in 1997. Hopefully this time next week I will be at or under 300 and try to get to 279 by Sept. 1st that's 10 weeks at 2 pounds a week. Gee at 291 I will be down 100 pounds since August 1st. I need to set a goal of walking more every day and see if I can get to 291 by August 1 that's 36 days.. I think I can do it. 11 pounds in 36 days. whoo hoo!

Straying

Hmmmm things are changing very gradually. I am much better with no overfilling my baby stomach and throwing up much less. However I just noticed that I am starting to TEST my pouch. Not with sugars or fats per se but in subtle other ways. Last night I went to Presto Pasta and although I usually have a green salad with Gorgonzola and pear and walnuts with a diced breast on the side. Last night i got the sampler knowing i wouldn't be able to eat it all. Chicken picatta and lasagna and fetuchini Alfredo. I ate about a 3" sq. of lasagna. and maybe two bites of the chicken and one mouthful of the fettuchini. Took a LONG time to get it to settle in my stomach so I think that the fats and the carbs were too much. This is the 1st dangerous thing I have done from my previous life before surgery. Very stupid. The remainder sits in my frig. I need to toss it out or at least the Alfredo. The chicken was not bad. But even if it had a little sauce that is more fat than I need. I need to be better at planning meals. I used to be great and cook on Sundays for the week,. I need to start that again. I need to look up recipes on Eggfaces Blog. :)
This could get very dangerous very quickly; this straying from the path, I have worked too hard to screw this up. Carbs have not been a real issue since surgery, proteins and sugars and fats are what I am keeping track of... but I think I need to be working smarter.

95 Days Post Op

I weighed in today at the Dr.'s office and am down 41 pounds since surgery (02-09) and since August 2008 down a total of 72 pounds. Dr says this is more weight loss than he typically sees however I wonder (of course) if he is just saying this to be nice. 1/2 a pound a day is fine he says as this is NOT a race. Do not compare, do not judge, just pay attention to why and what you are eating during this 1st few months so that if your weigh loss slows down you will have developed habits. That makes sense. My BMI has gone done from 70% (yes 70!!) to 60% although super duper obese is still morbidly obese obese but I'll take 10 points down on my BMI.

He asked me if I eat everything on my plate. I generally eat on a small salad plate and told him no. He says then adjust the portion size so that you eat the smaller portion. He says that if I put more on my plate I will find that in 3 years I will be eating it all. I need an even smaller plate I think :)
Nausea that plagued me for the 1st 8 weeks is now 97% gone in the AM. Just this morning I was feeling ick but no real nausea. I asked him if there was a nerve that controls nausea in the stomach or is it just in the brain or inner ear? He said that there is a nerve that can make you nauseous located in the stomach which comes from the brain and that totally answers the why about my nausea. I can imagine it got confused with the surgery and was hyper sensitive for those weeks.
Food is going good. I can eat almost everything now although sometimes I eat too fast or too much and it hurts - hurts so much the only relief is to urp it up... which is an immediate improvement. That is NOT the solution however and I recognize that.
That has been a steep learning curve and one that I have not yet conquered. It is one bite from thinking I may be full to being stuffed and that is the issue. ONE bite! Probably the biggest issue I have had. I think it just takes more experience.
I am beginning to see the difference in clothing. I hope to be able to transition to my last years summer clothes and then toss or recycle those and buy a few things for fall. They have an exchange at the Dr's office so I will drop off the clothes that are decent there periodically.
So that's my update.
No food head issues yet but I am sure that will come.

I'm a willow I can bend...

Okay hopefully this is the last change prior to the BIG change!
They want me at the hospital at 5:30am instead of a much more reasonable 9:30am. WHO works at 5:30AM? ::::Shudder::::: I guess I won't get a lot of sleep anyway so I may as well. The hospital is quite near my home so less than 15 minutes from door to door I suspect. I have put off buying a laptop and now my sound at the office doesn't work oh and I got the dreaded BLUE screen on my home computer last night so who knows when I will have contact again. hahaha It will all work out is my mantra.

Another...uhmmm challenge

Okay so I go to the Hospital this morning for my required Pre-op (Pay the co pay and deductible for this year, blood tests and a half million questions oh and my durable power of atty). At the last of the questions area they asked me to confirm the procedure and guess what WRONG procedure listed! They have me down for a lap band and I'm having the gastric bypass. Grrrrr
Called the Dr.'s office... they claim they sent over the correct paperwork. You know this is why they do pre op a few days before... it's just another screw up... what if it had been a face lift instead? :)

Almost Ready for Prime Time

I have the two appointments I needed. One to the Imaging Center to have a sonogram on my lower legs ...looking for blood clots that could be a problem with surgery and one at the Hospital for my pre op. Whoo hoo! Then I am ready for the big event. I feel calm and excited and apprehensive. Just what I need to feel :)

Surgery Date countdown

7 days until surgery WHOO HOO me!
Am concerned because I still need to get a sonogram on my lower legs
and have not heard from the imaging place that does it.
Also the Hospital guy 'Frank' needs to call me and set up a pre-op appointment.
Come onnnnnnnnn lets get this show on the road!