Becca H.

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118 Days until I graduate! 

sKooL starts this Tuesday... I'm not ready, but... here goes. This is the big push to the end. 

I'm losing weight again now that my band has been adjusted. I have great restriction... I'm eating much less sugar... I want to start getting more water in. I need to be better hydrated. 

Enjoy the new pics.

I had a really great day yesterday. I was still in bed at 10am (I know, but I didn't get home from work til after 4am, so it's not as slothful as it sounds...) and Amy suprised my by stopping by the house between jobs at work with a DOZEN gorgeous, fragrant red roses! What a way to wake up! Then we went to breakfast (well, her lunch) together. When we were done and I sent her back to work, I called my mom and we met for coffee at Starbux. After we had our coffee, I took her next door to Coldstone Creamery, where she'd never been before, and she got to sample a bunch of ice cream. I think she really liked it. She ended up leaving with some "birthday cake remix," which she shared with me :) **just a couple bites, don't everyone get in a huff** 

So then I went to work, where I was very productive, and that always puts me in a great mood. During my break I went back to Starbux and bought 1/4 lb of Gold Coast and also discovered a new sugar-free drink that I like :) And it didn't cost me a dime, because I used my gift card from Christmas! Even better. Then, I went over to Kohl's and bought a pair of jeans, and I was able to comfortably fit into a size that I anticipated would be very tight, so that ROCKS!...oh, and that also went on a Christmas gift card! The whole time I was at Starbux and Kohl's, I just felt COOL, you know? Do you ever have those days? I mean, I only have them once in a great while, which I SUSPECT is that case for most people... but anyway, I just felt like one cool cat. I had my mp3 player plugged into my brain, I was cruising around in my own little world... it was great....

AND... I left work on time last night, something that hasn't happened in forever.. I usually put in at least 30 minutes off the clock every day. 

Oh.. and I slept great, too...

Today has been really good, too... good news... hard news, but good news. 

So... I had my fill last night. I had a cup of french onion soup (no croutons) and was full!!! Actually, didn't even finish the cup. It's good to be a bandster again. Ahhh... 

Food... Today.... 

Breakfast @ 7am.= 1/2 cup Rasin Bran Crunch w/ 1/2 pint of 2% milk.
Sugar-free iced coffee drink, 24 oz, which I've been nursing all day.

Lunch@ 11:30am= 1.5 cups cheezy chix tortilla soup and 3/4 cup imitation crab meat. Still a little bit hungry. Wondering if I should grab some more protien? Soup went right on thru. 

Hey Ken! 

Thanks for replying to my blog :) 

Yeah... I am full of excuses...not that you suggested I'm "FULL" of them, but I am.  I'm working to overcome that, to be more direct and honest with myself, even when it means accepting failure or an "ugly" part of my personality. I'm not good at accepting less than perfection from myself, but I'm far from perfect so I often find myself caught up in this cycle of criticism and loating... and excuses sort of make me comfortably numb... not happy with myself necessairly, but at least the nagging voice gets muted. My challenge is to confront and even embrace my mistakes for what they are, which is part of me. So thanks for calling me out on them. 

I have been doing better with the sugar thing. Not perfect, but a lot better. How about you? I was drinking pop every day, just all willy-nilly about it. And sure, while I never finish one (at most, I drink half a soda), I had adopted this "I don't care" attitude. I've started making myself care again... keeping myself in check... at least making myself "answerable." And I've made real cut backs in the amount of pop I'm drinking. One or maybe two per week now. I'd also gotten to be quite the little carb whore (as Amy likes to refer to me sometimes... ). Again, nothing like I was pre-band, but I had shut off my inner "NO!" and was choosing carbs before protien, which is backwards. It's not "no carbs ever," it's just "always protien before carbs" and I had let that rule go. Now I'm back on the right path. 

My next challenge for getting back on track is getting portions and my frequency of eating back on target. I have been eating when I'm not hungry, a huge, scary pit that I'm afraid to fall to the bottom of. For the past two days, I've been making myself wait for at least four hours between meals, with a snack of 1/2 cup of cottage cheese after two hours if I have something mushy for breakfast or lunch, like cold cereal or soup. Routine eating really, really helps me stay on track. 

I have a fill today at 3:30. I'm excited and a little nervous. The weight should start falling off again, as I will have a lot of restriction. It's been a long time, actually, since I've had much in the way of restriction, so I'm a little nervous about it. I hope I handle it all right. It will be broth and mushies for me for the next few days, I suspect.

Well, yesterday (Dec.12) marked my one year anniversary of being banded. It sure has been a good year! Even though I did not reach my two goals, losing 100lbs and getting to 199lbs, I am still happy with what I have accomplished. I weighed myself yesterday and I was down to 206, which is a loss of 97 lbs. For a lot of people this seems like a great loss, but I know I could have lost a lot more than that... maybe up to 30 more lbs... but I didn't, and I am going to accept that and move on. I have not kicked all of my old "bad" eating habits and I have some work to do to get back into a "bandster" mindset. 

Right now I feel complacent. I am maintaining my weight with the exception of the fluctuations I get from my cycle, and sometimes I think that if I never lost another pound, I'd be okay with that. Amy says that I shouldn't let complacency get in the way of reaching my goal weight, but you know, sometimes it feels good just to be okay with myself for a change. You know?! Anyway, I know I do still need to make some adjustments to my lifestyle... I'm still not exercising like I should be, and I won't list all my excuses here because I need to STOP making them in the first place...I also need to kick the sugar habit because I'm not someone who can have an occasional piece of chocolate or drink of soda... I guess my personality is a little on the addicitve side or something

So even though it's not the new fiscal year, it's a new year for me, so I'm going to set some goals for myself. 1) I want to get active in two ways. I want to do something like biking or rock climbing on a regular basis, and I also want to start taking some kind of class, like boxing or yoga or a martial art. I think taking a class will help me stay motivated. And I really want to start using my bike and maybe getting into some off-roading at some point. First, though, I need to get the spokes fixed. 2) I want to kick the sugar habit for good. Actually, I really don't want to, I just know I need to. And that makes it so much harder. I do not like diet pop or any artificially sweetened drinks that I've tried, and believe me, I've tried a lot of them. So that leaves me with water, tea, and coffee, and those things get pretty boring after a while. I can't seem to strike a balance with having an occasional pop or an occasional piece of chocoalte... it's all or nothing. Anyone with ideas on how to break this cycle? 3) I need to get back to good portion control. I have fallen into the "eating till I'm full" trap that put me at 303 lbs in the very first place. I think a lot of that has to do with the problems I had with my band (prolapse) and the resulting fluctuation in fill levels and other issues. But I need to get back on track and that means measuring all of my food again. I kind of need to start at ground zero in that area. 

Those are my goals for my second year as a bandster. I think they're reasonable. I'm not setting a weight goal, but I do think I can reach my goal of 140 (about 65 lbs to go) by next December if I work hard. That's about five lbs a month, and with a proper fill and by making the changes I talked about, I know I can do it. 

I know I need to post some pictures on here. I've changed a lot. I'm wearing size 36 or 38 jeans now, I can wear size large button down shirts, and my underwear... holy shit, they're tiny! lol  Maybe by the time I go to Cancun in the Fall I'll look cute in a swimsuit. I better start toning my arms and abs (and thighs and butt and neck and... )right away!

my prolapse is healed! I got to watch my guts work on the t.v. screen as I drank the barium... very cool! Anyhow, the radiologist says everything looks good, back to normal. Now I need to call Cudjoe's office in a couple days and see when I can go in for a fill. I've been HUNGRY! 

Yesterday I broke through some kind of barrier with my chocolate cravings. They were so intense! I mean, chocolate was just about all I could think about there for a couple days... I was fixated on it. But at some point yesterday, I just kind of broke free from it. I feel so much better. Right now, some Oreos sound good, but I'm not feigning for them like I was previously. I hope this relief lasts. 

My doctor put me on some new meds... one is for depression and the other is a mood stabilizer. I hope they help get me back on track. Thing have been a little bleak lately. I hate depression. 

I hate depression, but I love this litle grey cat of ours... he has his head laying half on my hand, half on the keyboard, just lovin' me up. He's such a sweet boy... like Jake, only in a grey cat suit. I'm glad he chose us. 

That's all for now.

I feel so frustrated with this plateau. I have been going between 209 and 206 for a month now. Amy says we have been eating too much junk, but I just don't see it that way. Maybe we have, and the problem is that I'm comparing what I'm eating now to the way I ate pre-surgery. I don't know, but I do feel really aggrevated and frustrated. Amy said to me today that sure, we might not be eating much junk compared to what we used to eat, but we are eating A LOT more than we were when we first got banded. And I suppose she's right about that. When I first got my band and was on a regular diet, I ate almost nothing except fruits, veggies, and meat. I was vigilent about watching my sugar intake. If I had 8oz of juice in the morning, that would be it for my sugar consumption for that day. Now, I'm not like that. I eat some kind of sugar/chocolate once a day, every day (it's usually peanut M&Ms). I still eat very little in the way of carbs (pasta, bread, etc). I have pasta maybe twic a month, and the same for bread. I just get so mad because "regular" people eat more than I do, and especially more pop, candy, and other junk, and they stay at a constant weight. I eat that stuff,  but much less AND much less frequently, and I don't lose anything. 

I know the answer is to cut out the sugar totally again, but it just bugs me because "normal" people don't have to do that. 

I also know that I need to begin exercising. I should feel very, very lucky because I have lost all of this weight, almost 100 lbs, without consistant exercise. I'm sure that incorporating this element into my life would kick start my weight loss again and shatter the plateau. BUT... I'm afraid to fail. I always tell myself when I do begin exercising that "this time will be different", "this time I will get up every morning and walk or run or whatever." But I always let myself down, and it's easier to just not try than to continually disappoint myself. 

What do you all think?

Today I had an upper GI done which revealed a prolapse. It's just a smal one, but Cudjoe wanted me to get an unfill so that the stomach can go back down inside the band like it's supposed to be. WELL... he wanted to do my unfill today, between his surgical cases, so I agreed to wait around the hospital for him to fit me in. But mid-afternoon I got a call from the ambulatory surgery dept. saying a different doc could squeeze me in to do the unfill, so I ran upstairs (I work at the hospital) to let him work his *magic*. 

*Magic* smagic! He poked me several times and never got into my port. He wasn't using flouro, and when he finally did turn it on, he still couldn't find the right spot. So then he decided that my band had flipped, and called Dr. Cudjoe. Dr. Cudjoe said to come in later, between his cases, and he'd see what was going on. So after being a pin cushion for this other guy, Dr. Cudjoe comes in, hits the jackpot on the very first try, and tells me my band is not flipped and is fine.

I gotta go back for another upper GI next week to see if the unfill worked and allowed my stomach to go back to where it should be. I hope it does. I'm just really glad my band didn't slip or anything!

Well, I think I may need to get an unfill. I have been having nightime vomiting, and when I say that, I mean I am throwing up in my sleep. Dangerous and disgusting. Not to mention an interruption to my sleep. Everything I've read says that it's very important to get a slight unfill under these circumstances because I could have a slippage, and slippages suck. Plus, I've hit a plateau with my weight loss, and I've also read that people having the same problem as me stop losing weight, too. But after they get a small unfill, they start losing weight again. So, hopefully for my weight loss and my overall health, an unfill will do the trick. 

I bought a motorcycle yesterday. It's a 1983 Kawasaki Specter, 750. I picked it up for $250 because it needs carbs, a rear tire, and a speedometer. For that price, I really don't think I can go wrong. Even if I have to end up dumping $600-$800 into it, which is a lot more than I think I'll need, but even if I do, it will totally be worth it. I should easily be able to resale it for a grand, if I want. But I bought it to ride, and that's what I'm going to do. 

I've started measuring out my food again, like I did back at the beginning of this weight loss journey. I'm eating just about 11/2 cup of food at my meals when I measure it, sometimes less, and it feels good. Not over eating, and not under eating. Although, today I was pretty hungry after "breakfast", but that's because all I had was a cup of tomato florentine soup... which goes right thru ya! I had to eat some salad like, less than two hours later. 

My boss cut my hours at work. Instead of being able to get 30-32 hours a week, she cut me down to 24. It's actually not her fault... it's a hospital-wide cut back- but it doesn't matter. I can't live on that amount of hours, so I'm looking for other work. I hope I can get in at Midland. I applied for a job there doing the exact same thing as I am now, only full-time and second shift. Keep your fingers crossed for me. 

That's it for now. I need to go do some homework. :( 

L8R

I just found out I need five additional credits to graduate, so I won't finish in December like I had planned. I feel sick.