Yesterday, I threw up for the second time since I had surgery.  The first time was my first night home from the hospital after having surgery.  I crushed up my anti-nausea pill (as I was suppose to), took it, and then threw it plus what little was in my stomach back up.

Yesterday, I had dinner at my parents.  I ate dinner, taking one bite too much.  But, would have been okay but guessed that I would have growing discomfort for twenty or so until it subsided.  Not really bad over the top, but a reminder that it was one bite too many.  But....  I didn't stop there.  On the way to taking my dish to the sink and putting something away in the fridge, I noticed a bowl of beautiful, chilled, cut melon.  I pulled back the plastic wrap and broke off the tip of one juicy slice of the wonderful orange stuff.  And, then I ate it.  Well..  I put it in my mouth and chewed, taking several swallows, slowing down with how much of it I actually swallowed until I knew I couldn't go further and was sitting there with a mouth half full of uneaten melon.  I went to the sink and spit it out, wondering if that would be enough.  But, I was feeling that tug right in the underside of my gullet that said that I might be throwing up.  Still standing at the sink, I stood and waiting to see if the sensation would abate.  It didn't.  Instead, I upchucked my dinner right down the disposal drain.  The water was running and I don't think anyone noticed except my Mom who was already standing at the sink.  I ended up retching about 4 times and that was that.  It was done.  And I felt fine.  Very fine.  Instead of dealing with an hour or so of pain and discomfort wondering if I was going to throw up...  within seconds of going too, too far, I did throw up.  And then I felt fine.  It was a bit of a mental shift for me. Usually, when people think of someone so sick they are throwing up, it's the image of them throwing up and still feeling awful.  With this, the pressure was released and I felt good again.  Wow.

Okay, so I've said all this.  I don't have any plans to seek a repeat performance.  I'm not going to supplement my wt loss efforts with upchucking.  My thought after I retched was, there goes dinner.  There goes protein.  I'm going to have to eat again when I get home to just try to get my protein allotment in.  And, I do not want my body to learn upchucking as the go to physical response.  I want to be able to control whether or not I am going to hold my dinner down ... what I mean is, generally speaking, if I can help it, I don't want to upchuck.

But... it was amazing to me that after I did upchuck, I felt better and was able to simply resume with my visit versus being in pain and uncomfortable until the food processed through.  Of course, if I had stopped eating when my belly said "full," I wouldn't have been upchucking or felt uncomfortable....   

When I started this journey, I was only fitting into my most forgiving size 24W's.  I've now lost 81.4 lbs (from 298 lbs) and now fit into a size 18W pants.  Counting the W's as half sizes, that equals 6 sizes.

24W to   24
24     to   22W
22W  to   22
22      to   20W
20W  to   20
20      to  18W 

I'd read somewhere that in the lower sizes that each size equates to 10 lbs of weight difference.  And, that the larger sizes equate to 20 lbs of difference between them.  But, when you count the W's as half sizes, it makes it closer to 10 lbs between sizes even at the plus sizes.  

I would like to note for anyone starting down this path, I didn't physically wear all the sizes listed above.  I wore the clothes that I had available for as long as I could until I could fit into whatever smaller size clothes I had waiting on me.  I've been incredibly fortunate.  My dear workmate, Martha, was smaller than me to begin with and she had wt loss surgery a couple months ahead of me.  She has very, very generously passed the work clothes that she is too small for on to me.  This has been a blessing and a half and has made the material side of wt loss much easier for me.  Thank you Martha!!!  

I just reached my 6 month benchmark.  And, of course, I had my 6-month doctor's check. I didn't see the nutritionist this time and sadly I feel like that made the visit more enjoyable for me.  (Others have talked about their frustration from talking to the nutritionist so I feel a little bad about saying that but a little okay about it, too).  I got weighed in, saw the surgeon, and had my blood drawn to run a check on vitamin levels and my cholesterol.  I had thought my doc said to stop taking my cholesterol medicine just after the surgery.  He said he wouldn't have said that.  Ops...  I guess I was suppose to still be taking them.  :)  My cholesterol #'s were actually pretty high at my 3-month check.  But, there's a good chance I ate something fatty, greasy on my way to the office and that can apparently affect the #'s.  So, I'm hoping that the results this time look a bit better.  I will most likely wait for the blood panel results before pursuing going back on the cholesterol meds.  And, the blood panel will take several weeks because some of it has to be frozen and sent off to a lab that runs certain tests.

Where I am in my wt loss -- I came in at 46% of my wt loss out of 160 lbs to lose.  I think the amount that I weighed in at was 220 on their scale.  But, it was into the day, after breakfast and I had clothes on.  I don't know why I feel like I need to qualify that.  Funny, isn't it?  Anyway, I was suppose to be at 49% wt loss since I was at 29% at my 3-month weigh in.  That translates to 4.6 lbs behind schedule.  And that's okay.  That's pretty respectable.  But, of course, it would have been nice to have been on schedule.  Slipping behind can be like a muddy hole with slippery, slippery sides.  It can be really hard to get out.

What the doc (Dr. Houston, Nashville, TN) told me - The doc asked how I was doing and how things were going.  And, we talked a little about this and that relating to my wt loss.  Ultimately what he said was that, yep, being at 46% of my wt loss at this point was good but he was assuming I wasn't exactly on target (49%, 50% if I had been at 30% with my 3-month visit) because of scheduling difference in exactly when my appointment fell.  Sad news...  my appointments have been very consistently spread so the deficit of wt lost is all me.  But, this is the part I'm really getting to....  He asked if I was still eating lean proteins.  I told him no, that I was eating quite a bit of fat because it helps things move in the bathroom.  What he said - and I took this to heart - was that he would rather me lose that last 30 lbs (referring to a future point in my wt loss journey) and find out what my malabsorption will be like than to still have 30 lbs to lose and find out what my malabsorption was going to be like.  I understood what he was saying.  What he was saying is that as my body gets further and further out from the surgery, it's going to adapt more and more.  It's possible that the malabsorption aspect of my surgery may eventually have a very mild effect on my ability to lose weight.  If I don't take full advantage of how my body is responding to the surgery while the surgery is still fresh, as I approach my goal, I might reach a point where I find it difficult to lose weight because the surgery is no longer having that new impact of easy wt loss that it once had.  So, he'd rather the excess wt be gone by the time my body reaches a point that it has pretty much finished adapting to the internal changes than still have more wt to lose.  Please note, he's not saying how much my body will have adapted.  He's just saying that I would be in a better situation to have the excess wt off of me by the time we reach a point that we are finding that out.   I took that advice home with me.  I will be living that advice as I make my journey toward reaching my goal of 160 lbs of wt lost.   In closing, he said treat this like a diet.  Make it hurt.  Work for getting the wt off.  Be proactive about it.  I haven't been very proactive about it and I DO NOT want to be left with 30 lbs left on me that I want off.  I've got my goal in sight and I'll be stepping it up and working toward it in a more driven, focused manner.  

I have reached the 2-teens.  For the last couple of days I have been at 218.0.  When I dipped into the teens, my eyes didn't want to read the numbers on the scale.  For several days, i would look at the numbers and literally struggle to be able to read them.  I don't know what it was other than maybe it was so Amazingly new to me.  Wow Wow Wow....  I'm in the 2-teens.  :)