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.