Mary H.

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I moved my blog from OH's blogging tools to blogger. You can follow more of my journey at :

notyouraveragegal.blogspot.com

Thanks!

Today is exactly one month since my surgery! I was banded August 11th and today on September 11th, I stepped on the scale and found that I had hit my first mini goal - I came in at 299.4 lbs....

Goodbye 300's and hello 200's! I will never again see 300+lbs on the scale again.

Well, by the end of the day I know I will... I weigh in the mornings because my legs are not swollen so I know it's a truer weight. I'm sure I'll be seeing 300's on the scale until I'm down to about 295 or so.

But, I was SO ELATED to see 299. It's been way too long.

What an amazing feeling to know that no matter what, I'll never see 300lbs again!

Wednesday I stepped on my Wii fit for the first time since I weighed under the Wii Fit's weight limit of 330lbs. Believe me, it's a pain in the butt to try to use the Wii Fit if you weight too much. It flat out won't let you! I had to bend over and lean on the board with my hands so that it was only registering partial body weight. Then, the weight is different everytime, so it slows it all down.

Wednesday: 30 minutes of advanced step & then I did the Hula Hooping activity for fun along with some of the strength exercises just to see if I could do them. I had a hard time with those!

Thursday: 20 minutes of advanced step & then 20 minutes of free step (The Wii Remote acts like a counter and you step to the rhythm, but you can watch TV instead of having to have the Wii screen up!). A total of 40 minutes of stepping ... over 2,000 steps and 330 calories burned.

Not bad!  I may should have skipped the Hula Hooping activity on Wednesday because I had (and still have) some abdominal soreness that is kind of annoying me and concerning me a little. It makes you twist around too much, so I should have just skipped that until a few weeks down the road.

Hopefully the soreness is just from the activity in general...yesterday after the 40 minute workout, I did have a little nausea, so today I'm going to skip it since I'm going to have a long weekend of walking around ahead of me.

My legs are SO SORE. I miss Aleve! It's the only thing that really nips it in the bud and I can't take it. I had a hard time sleeping last night because I was so achy everywhere. My legs are still in major pain today too....and I have the same abdominal soreness and tenderness :(

The soreness is understandable, but the tenderness worries me a little...

It has been 3 weeks since I changed my life forever! Since I have been a grown adult with a job with insurance, I have been doing my darndest to change my health and maintain a healthy weight. It never worked out for me. No pills, no gyms, no support group was ever enough, so I decided to get a tool that would suppliment my will-power and hard work. I have lost weight on my own by changing habits, but this time, there is no going back!

My heaviest weight (around 2006/2007): 379
My weight this time last year: 350
My weight pre-op diet: 333
My weight pre-op Surgeon's Visit: 324
My weight on surgery date: 320
My current weight 3 weeks out: 305

I have to say, I was surprised at how much harder this surgery was than my gallbladder removal in March. I thought it would be pretty comparable, but Lap-Band was quite a bit more draining. When thinking through it all, it makes sense that this is more difficult. You have more incisions, you have more areas that need healing and you have the introduction of a foreign object into your body along with a major change and reduction in calorie in-take.

I have to allow myself to recover and have some patience! Yesterday was exactly 3 weeks and I am just NOW getting a little of my energy back!

I just realized that it has been at least 4 weeks since I have had any "bad foods". That is one entire month of no candy bars or "treats" and no fast food or large portions. I've been on diets before, yes, and I've gone even longer than that without sugar before, but I've never been able to cut out sugar and maintain very small portions before.

Yay me!

This time next week I will be getting prepped for surgery! Today I began the pre-op liquid diet.

My surgeon mentioned SlimFast several times, yet he then proceeded to say that the liquids needed to be sugar-free. I got news for him - SlimFast is NOT sugar-free! But, I have my protein powder that tastes just as good. With milk it has about 40 more calories than the SlimFast, but whatever.

Yesterday I bought as many liquid things as I could think of! This is going to be SO BORING. It won't be so bad for breakfast or lunch, but dinner will SUCK. One thing that is hard is a liquid diet that isn't too sweet or too salty. Fortunately, we have artificial sweeteners, but no artificial salt! Anything that is liquid and not sweet is LOADED with sodium, it seems! I got 3 of those Campbell's soup to go things - creamy tomato, classic tomato, and cream of chicken. Who EATS these? I've never actually eaten them, but I have used them in recipes. Hopefully something with be tasty enough to help me make it through! I also have my progresso chicken noodle soup. I rarely eat the noodles, chicken, or carrots out of it anyways! The broth is just really good.

Last night I prepared "the last supper" hahaha :) I made some 3-cheese tortellini and meat-sauce. It was good without being tooooo indulgent. I didn't want to spoil everything, but I did know that it would be a while before I could have anything remotely like that again!

My surgeon says 2 weeks of liquids after sugery and then 2 weeks of mushies afte surgery. At that rate, I bet I will be half way to my first goal within the first 2 months! LOL

Friday I went for my pre-op appointment! I was worried about making sure my BMI was within range, and I was fine! I was retaining a LOT of fluid and when I finally flushed all that out, I lost about 15lbs... No kidding. It's insane!

My surgery date was moved back two days :(

There were some conflicts and they had to rearrange some things. Instead of the 9th, I will be going in on the 11th. I will definitely be spending the night in the hospital since my surgery time isn't until 11:00am.

While I was in the office, the surgeon took my "before" photo. I was so excited. Every before photo gets an "after" photo - so let's get on with the "after" photos!

Oddly enough, my "before" photo was one of my thinnest photos in recent history! Ha!

I am so destracted by my impending lifestyle change. I wish I could hop onto the operating table now and say "Knock me out fellas 'cause we're slappin' a band on this thing!"...I have so much work to get done at the office, but I just can't seem to focus on any of it! It sucks! I keep reading up on surgery stuff and recipes and reading blogs and skimming through before/after photos. Then I ordered some books on Amazon. I am making a list of things to have on-hand after surgery. Then, the next thing you know I'm looking into costs of plastic surgery and I haven't even had the band put on yet!

I'm just consumed by this right now and excited. This is what I want to be thinking about... not WORK. Gah! ;)

25 days until my surgery date! Wow. It's so close, yet it seems like forever to wait!

I had my gallbladder removed in late March and for some reason I gained weight after the surgery. I was about 322 when I had the surgery and then the last time I went to see my surgeon I was at 337! This gain made my BMI too high for surgery (my surgeon wants a BMI of 55 or lower), so he made me promise to get it down so that I could have my surgery on time. I assured him that I would. And I will!

Get this: Yesterday I weighed in the morning. 336. I had some water retention in my legs that was obvious, so I took one of my fluid pills to help aleviate some of that. I drank almost 4 liters of water yesterday too.

Today? 330.4. Almost 6lbs of fluid! That's amazing. That also gives me the BMI I need. So, it makes me feel better that the weight was partly water! I still want to lose all I can before surgery.