August 16, 2006
5 months post-op now. It has been a hard month. The weight loss is progressing very slowly. I am focusing on eating right and exercising consistently. I only lost 7 lbs this month. I am down exactly 70 lbs. So hard though only seeing 7 lbs. I have lost 10.25 inches and that feels great!!! I have lost a total of 51.25 inches in 5 months. I hope that I will exceed my goal of losing 75 lbs by my 6 month anniversary. I have lost about half of the total weight I want to lose. Unbelievable. I have to keep things in perspective that I have come so far in only 5 short months.

I promised to talk about my eating. Well, that is going pretty good. I still get what I call bubbles in my stomach nearly everytime I eat. I have just learned to deal with the uncomfortable feeling this gives me. I have started taking my acifex again to try and combat this. I can eat pretty much what I want. I really try to avoid carbs, although I don't mind a few crackers here and there. I don't eat pasta, potatoes, or rice. I eat meat and veggies for my meals. I have been able to eat corn and I love that! I eat about 3 oz of meat at both lunch and dinner with my veggies. I try to cook them healthy but occassionally have the in sauces or butter. The only beef that I can tolerate is really expensive high quality cuts of beef. Even ground beef doesn't sit right with me. I enjoy ground turkey though and that works for me. I mostly eat chicken or pork. I snack on fruit, beef jerky, or nuts. I try to limit myself to one snack a day but then I usually get a sugar free fudgecicle or 1 piece of sugarfree candy after dinner, or fruit. I enjoy watermelon, cantaloupe, cherries & grapes. I haven't tried anything else. I eat a protein shake nearly every morning for breakfast. This helps me to get almost 50 grams of protein with just my 1st meal of the day. I have sampled a bite or two of some other sweets/treats like cookies or chips. They don't bother me if I stick to just a taste. Funny how that really is all I need now. Before surgery I could never just take one or two bites of anything and be done. Now, I am truly satisfied with just a taste. I think that I get in about 800-1000 calories a day.

Occasionally I get really bad pains in my stomach from some food I eat or I get very nauseaous. When this happens I usually can not eat for about two days without feeling sick or having pain. I have not figured out why this happens but I am getting over each episode so I haven't bothered my Doc with this. I often think the pain comes from eating too fast or not chewing well enough. As for the nausea, I just don't know. One day cashews did it to me. I can eat those just fine but not this time. It just didn't work for me that time. I was sick to my stomach for nearly 4 days from that. Haven't had a problem with them since but I still limit them to only 3-5 cashews at a time.

One time I came home from work, stressing out about my husband's job situation. I went straight for some tortillia chips and cheese. I ate them, felt terribly guilty becuase I know this was not a good food choice neither was it a good thing to turn to food anyway. Well, I paid for it. We went to the Howard County Fair for the evening. It promised to be a lot of fun. Well around 45 minutes after I ate those chips and cheese, just as we were getting in line for our first ride at the fair, I began to get very nauseaus and shakey. At first I thought it might be the heat. Nope! We were in the shade and it wasn't a very hot day. I started getting light headed and broke out into a sweat, just standing there. Well, I had to tell my daugher and husband to ride w/o me since I had to find a place to sit down before I fell down. I didn' think I was going to be able to stay at the fair. Well, somehow I managed to push through the feelings I had, drank some water and practiced some deep breathing to calm myself. I fought the "dumping" and we actually had a good time. I have only dumped a few times. Believe me...it's not fun. I try to avoid that at all times. I learned that I need to really stick to good/right food choices and I need to stick to my new habits of walking or talking things out or getting a hot bath, etc when I am stressed out.

Well, I really need to get some pics posted here. I should really find a way to post them through a personal webpage. Maybe this weekend I'll take the time to do this for myself.

Thanks for checking in again. Hugs, Robin