51 lb down, 31 since surgery

Today I weighed myself and I have lost a total of 51 pounds. This was my first milestone, I had created different milestones for myself. 50 pounds lost, 75, 100 and 150. I must say I do feel good, I feel satisfied. I thought it would feel more amazing being here but I think I am a little bit disappointed because the wrong concept about bariatric surgery is that you lose weight like crazy, like 10 pounds a week! (not true, everybody loses weight at their own pace, the important thing is LOSING!) Today is January 21, therefore it has been about 5 and a half weeks since surgery. That is an average of about 5 pounds lost per week since surgery. Although, this is not all that accurate considering I lost 2 pounds a day for the first week, then it slowed down.

Since my last blog post I have incorporated regular food back into my diet. It is nice to be able to eat real food again but the downside to that is that I am still tempted to eat bad foods. Since I didn't have the gastric bypass I don't experience the negative side effects of dumping that come along with the bypass. Therefore I can still pretty much have anything to eat but I can only eat very little. I have noticed that bread makes me really sick, this I consider a blessing in disguise. Before surgery, carbs were my weakness food. However, just because I can't have bread doesn't mean I can't have things such as cookies or cake. I still have to be careful because my stomach seems to be okay with dense carb foods like cake, cracker, cookies although I wish it wasn't!

Water intake is still so hard! I also struggle with keeping up with everything I have to take in a day, here is my list:

• prescription Vitamin D every week
• multivatiman every day
• hemagenics (fancy word for folate, iron, calcium, and B12) every day
• Hair, skin and nails supplement every day (okay I don't HAVE to drink this but it has collagen in it and I really want my hair to get longer and thicker so this is more of a vanity thing)
• Vitamin D3 
• Pepcid, one during the day, one during the night (stupid heartburn)
• My Tums (stupid heartburn, yes again, stupid heartburn)

One big challenge for me is grazing. I have always been a grazer, it's such a purpose defeating habit that I wish I could break! Now that I am able to eat food again I notice that I am grazing again. This is because even though I am full really quickly at meal times, in between meal times I can eat small "slider" foods or foods that have no substantial protein or nutrient value to them. This weekend my brother had friends over to watch the NFC championship game (GO NINERS!!) and I found that even though I was full after I ate my shredded beef as my meal, an hour after that I was able to eat chips and dip! I was eating chips in front of me while we watched the game because even if I can't have a whole plate of chips in one sitting, I can still have 15 chips and dip over the time span of an hour or two. That is NOT good. One thing that really helps with my grazing is chewing gum, I am going to start buying packs of sugarfree gum and leaving them hidden in places where I spend time in. My room, my cubicle, kitchen at home, my car, and the living room at home. This way whenever I feel like reaching for crackers, chips or cookies I will eat simply one cracker to feel like I have tasted it and avoid that feeling deprived feeling and then reach for a piece of gum to keep my mouth occupied. 

So right now I am at the point where my focus is protein, water, exercise, repeat. 

So I finally directed some energy into doing before and after pictures. I made a couple of collages. Both collages have me before surgery on the left and pictures of me after surgery (today) on the right. 

Until next time!

Melissa

Feeling inspired!

Today I went to my monthly Bariatric Surgery Support Group. I felt so inspired that I wanted to do a blog post. I want to acknowledge how amazing all these people are. Wow! These people truly inspire me to keep striving forward. Today was a "check in" which means we go around the room and every person stands up and shares his or her story. (Some meetings we have a speaker that talks about a subject us Bariatric patients would benefit from.) 

Every time I go to a check in meeting and hear others stories I always find something from each person that I can relate with. Among the things I heard today; getting enough protein in, getting enough water in, exercise, eating slowly, and plateaus. I also see people get emotional speaking about their story, it's amazing how courageous all of them are!

Next month we will have a speaker talk about emotional eating, I will be sure to make it! Emotional eating is such a significant factor in why I gained all the weight I did. 

I realized that I didn't post a picture I was proud of and wanted to share with all my blog followers. If you are my friend on Facebook you probably saw it. What this is is me in my middle school "spirit team" cheerleading uniform. I haven't been able to fit back into this uniform as an adult which makes sense because the last time I weighed what I do now is in middle school. So here it is!

One month update

Weight loss: Total -44 lbs, -24 lb since surgery

Wow! I can't believe it has been a month since I was sleeved. I can honestly say this past month has been such an emotionally and physically draining one. I get all weird typing this right now as I recall the struggles I have dealt with.

First is first though, the weight loss. My weight loss stalled for about a week and I could not understand why I stalled. I was so disheartened and it actually crossed my mind to think that I might be the first person to whom the surgery did not work for. I had to regroup and somehow break my stall. I went to my post op appointment at my surgeon's clinic and the Nurse asked me "Have you been exercising?" and I admitted... No I wasn't. Not only that but I also was not having enough protein which is hard to get in when you are on soft liquids and liquids and you don't like the taste of protein supplements. The exercise... I realize I was able to exercise 2 weeks after surgery and to be honest I was putting it off until I was able to eat food again. On liquids I just felt so weak and down in the dumps all the time that all my body wanted to do was get home from work and crawl into bed (more about this down in challenges). I went to the gym though, I have been all of once but it helped me lose 4 pounds. I broke my stall. Since it has been a month now, I  am able to eat real food again which has helped my mood so much. Among the things I have been having:

• vegetables
• greens
• soft chicken
• tuna
• beans
• soup 
• Oat bran (I eat it every morning for breakfast now since my stomach doesn't seem to like greek yogurt anymore)

Do I feel better now? yes. Being on broth sucked, I know hate chicken broth and highly dislike soup. Is there still challenges? Yes.

Since I started eating food now I know experience that feeling of fullness that everybody always talks about. People really don't exaggerate when they say you will have 4 bites and be stuffed. Is it a good thing? Absolutely. However, I have to eat so slow. And I know it seems like something that would be easy to learn but I haven't fully mastered it. I still catch myself eating too fast and then I feel so sick that I want to just throw up. 

Another challenge: Getting enough water in. I was so used to taking big chugs of water before surgery and I was pretty good about getting around 1.5 liters of water in a day. Now, on average I can only get about 1 liter in comfortably. One thing that I was reminded of is that my mouth really is bigger than my stomach right now. This means that if I take a big sip of water and swallow, as soon as it hits my stomach I feel pain. So I find myself trying to get water in as often as I can. 

Challenge: Energy level. Going back to work was both a good thing and a bad thing. I was able to feel useful again. The bad thing is that I had to find the energy to get out of bed and get myself to work.. On time. I think now I am back to normal after being back for 2 weeks. But it was hard. It sucks because I feel so frumpy when I roll into work with minimal makeup, bags under my eyes and clothes  that fits too big. Once I am there and in my cubicle engaging myself in something I feel okay though. For some reason my taste buds don't like my pre-surgery addiction which was Starbucks anymore. So  most of the time I have to either go without coffee or get McDonald's coffee because it seems to be the only kind of coffee I can tolerate. I won't say I was surprised though because I was warned that after surgery my taste buds would change and they have. My coworkers are really sweet and always ask how I am doing but I keep on getting comments that I look tired. It will get better though.

Heartburn: I have to be on continuous heartburn medicine because since my stomach is so small, the stomach acids have less space and they come up into my esophagus. For the most part I am okay but I have been waking up like at 3 AM with really bad heartburn and I can't get it to go away right away so I lose sleep over it. Again, something I was told would happen. To be expected.

Another thing, as I lose weight I notice that I become cold easily. So at night on top of the heartburn I also have trouble sleeping because I am cold. 

But out of this whole surgery process I still have reason to smile! I slowly am becoming more like the woman I am supposed to. It still feels good to be able to fit into clothes 6 sizes smaller than when I started this whole process. Also the group of people with who I surround myself with has been amazing.

Okay for pictures! I have been getting a lot of requests for pictures. I am so bad at asking somebody to take pictures of me so I just end up taking my own pictures. So the most recent picture I have is of me trying on clothes... Here it is. As you can see my face is the first body part that becomes more noticeable when I lose weight.

I will take more pictures and be sure to blog more often. A friend suggested that I blog more often... I will! (Thanks Crystal)

Until next time...

Mely <3