Hey, long time no see! lol That's been my fault. I told myself I would keep this stuff up to date and document everything but, as you can see, all that went out the window. lol I'm gonna try to do better, but I'm not making any promises. lol The best way to keep up with me day to day is on Facebook. I update my Facebook daily (of course, it's often not surgery related but sometimes it is) and if you want to know what my life is like now, that's the way to do it. I don't mind adding strangers to my Facebook but I do have you guys on a limited profile so just keep that in mind. lol Add me at http://www.facebook.com/bekkiamberbethmariesuelynn#!/bekkiamberbethmariesuelynn. Anyway, on to the update..



 I have had a wonderful experience with my sleeve. I'm almost 8 months out and I have lost 174lbs from my highest weight and 139lbs from my surgery date. I weigh 270lbs now and I'm still losing fairly quickly. My weight loss has slowed a little bit now that I've passed the 6 month mark but I'm still losing about 15 - 20lbs a month. I don't really stall..I just find that my weight fluctuates up and down. I have gained some days but never more than 2lbs and it always comes right off within the next few days. Up until I hit 6 months out, I did NOT work out routinely. I worked out every now and then from months 1 - 6 but nothing on a regular basis. Now, I try to hit the gym at least 4 times a week. I do a 30 minute weight loss interval program on an elliptical machine, sometimes I'll do it twice. Then I'll do exercises that focus on toning my arms and abs for another 30 minutes. It sounds like a lot but, in all honesty, most days I just do the elliptical. I'm focused on just burning the fat right now.

    As far as diet goes, I have broken the rules a little bit. My main fluid intake is diet coke. My surgeon isn't against diet cokes but he is against them being your main fluid intake and it definitely is for me. I know it's bad and I need to ween myself off of it but I just haven't found water as appealing as I did before surgery. That's because I used to drink the bulk of my water with my meals. That's how I got my water in. I washed the food down. But we can't do that anymore and water on it's own just grosses me out. If I have some type of small snack or something I'll try to sip some water with it then to counter the diet coke but I don't get nearly enough water. That's been my biggest issue for sure. That and carbs. It's unbelievable how many carbs are in food. EVERYTHING has carbs and less than 20g of carbs is hard to manage. I would say my daily carb intake is about 100g or less. I'm definitely working everyday to lower that number but I'm not too concerned about it. My daily calorie intake is anywhere from 600 - 1000. My surgeon got angry with me at our last meeting because I said I ate around 1000 calories and he just lost it. He said at 6 months out I shouldn't be getting more than 600 calories. Most days I am pretty close to 600, but I do have "bad" days but that's life. I don't want to deprive myself of any type of food that I like because that's not a lifestyle change, that's a diet as we all know. If I go over my 600 calories, I make sure to work out a little harder in the gym, that's all. Because at the end of the day, regardless of what you eat, losing weight comes down to creating a calorie deficit. Calories consumed vs. calories burned. It takes 3,500 calories to lose or gain one pound. So if my body already burns 2,000 calories a day just based on my lifestyle (doing regular, daily activities) and I go to the gym and burn an additional 800 calories, that's 2,800 calories that my body burned today. If I only eat 600 calories, then my total calories burned at the end of the day would be 2,200 which isn't one pound, yet, but in 2 days I will have burned enough calories to equal about 1.5 pounds. Make sense?

   Anyway, the moral of the story is that I don't focus so much on what I'm eating, just the nutritional info. If I want a piece of bacon for breakfast, I'll have one. If I want a little bit of ice cream, I'll have it. If I want a cookie, I'll eat one. I can't eat much of it anyway so why not? I don't want to be afraid of food. It's when you eat one cookie several times throughout the day that it becomes a problem (otherwise known as snacking). But I've found that I keep pretty busy now. I have more energy to go out and do things with my friends and if I'm out and about, then I'm not thinking about food and that's always a good thing.

    I'm not at goal yet but I certainly plan to be by my one year surgiversary. I'm not even sure what my goal is to be honest. I've never been anything below 300 at this height (5'9) so I have no clue what I'll look like. If I go by BMI standards, I'll be looking at 150lbs. I'm shooting for 170, but if I make it to 150, then hell yes to me, right? lol So I've got 100lbs left to go. I remember starting out and thinking "My god, I've got 290lbs to lose...THAT'S SO MUCH!" and I wasn't sure if it was gonna be possible. But I was NOT willing to do the RNY for many reasons (the main reason being I wanted to keep it as close to "natural" as possible, not knowing what, if any, problems would arise from the malabsorption) so I am DETERMINED to make this sleeve as successful as possible for me. Especially since my insurance didn't cover it and I paid for it out of pocket. I owe it to myself to rock the hell out of this sleeve and I plan to do just that.  

    The woman who inspired me, http://www.obesityhelp.com/member/theresap/ , she lost 221lbs by 14 months post-op and I remember thinking "If I lost, 221lbs that would put me at 188lbs! I could be in the 100s by this time next year! That's unbelievable!!" And then I thought, if she can do it at 40-something, there's no reason why I can't do it at 20 years old. I made the decision and never looked back.

    I have had no major issues since my surgery. Immediately after surgery my thyroid went a little crazy and my doctor started me on Synthroid to stabilize it. Up until then I had never had a problem with my thyroid; however, my surgeon refused to believe the surgery had anything to do with it. Around 3 months out, I experienced some heart palpitations but they were nothing serious and not thought to be related to my surgery. Then, around 5 months out, I had a gallstone scare because my urine got reallly dark for a couple days but that turned out to be nothing. My doctor contributed that to a gallstone trying to form but didn't and the debris was flushed out of my system. My surgeon put me on medicine to preserve my gallbladder when I had my surgery but I skipped a week because I went on vacation and forget my meds and that's what happened.

    Before surgery I took medicine for high blood pressure, fluid retention, and acid reflux every day (all at 19 years old). Now I take a thyroid pill, actigall (which I will eventually come off, once my weight stabilizes) and an over the counter acid reducer (only when I need it). I used to sleep with a BiPap machine for sleep apnea but now, am no longer Darth Vader.  I used to wear a size 26, 4XL. I now wear a size 18, 1XL.

    I would absolutely, 1,000,000,000,000% do this again. I have never been happier or felt better. I have a life now. I am LIVING instead of just existing.  And this is only the beginning. The first 6 months have been quite a ride and I cannot WAIT to see what else is in store for me.

I can't think of anything else anyone might wanna know about but if anyone has a question about something I didn't talk about, feel free to ask! I am an open book and will tell you anything you want to know.  I will try my best to update not just the weight tickers, but EVERYTHING a little more than I have been. I know how much I hated going to unfinished or un-updated profiles when I was in the research stage.

xoxo,
Bekki