Candysniper

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Here is the latest update: 95 pound lost  , Went from size 20 to a size 6 and that is getting baggy! I have lost twelve inches on my waist and twelve on my hips and have much more stamina and energy than I used to.

I have a little bit of bat wings and some droopiness in my thighs and the stretch marks run from mid-calf to my hips like multiple San Andreas fault lines but hey, it's all good, battle scars right?

I have ten pounds left to my goal and I am loosing right around 3/4 of a pound a week. Seeing how I have pretty much abandoned any eating plan and eat what I want when I want, that is really not so bad. I don't exercise on a regular basis, even though I know I should, I have always hated exercise so this is no suprise to me.

I truly think my lack of motivation is a big psychological barrier. At the time of my life when I was at this weight, I was utterly miserable and stuck in a horrible marriage & I think that I am letting that interfere with my progress. I honestly don't know how to get past this & since I friggin' hate therapy, I am loathe to go that route although I am considering it. 

Even if I don't lose any more weight, I feel much better about myself and would feel that I have done extremely well. I don't base my self worth on what my doctor expects of me so I am not putting all that much pressure on myself to have my weight at a certain number, although I really do want to hit at least the 100 lb. goal.

For the newbies, I certainly wouldn't use my lackadaisical attitude toward eating and excercise as a model, however I would say, live your life and enjoy it, don't start a new obsession such as the daily scale or criticising every little flaw in the mirror. Moral of my story at the moment? Give yourself a break & enjoy life!

I recently had my bloodwork redone just to get a before and after & wanted to share a couple of the results that were very encouraging to me.

Pre-op fasting blood sugar level - 109 (pre-diabetic)
Post-op (7 months) - 77

Pre-op cholesterol - 235
Post-op (7 months) - 167 - this is the smallest number I have had since at least 1993!!! Wow!

Blood pressure is exactly at normal where pre-op it was climbing. I am so thrilled with these results because the surgery has achieved what I had hoped for in terms of health benefits, this means I get to spend more time with my wonderful husband!

Well I have not been on OH at all really since January. I was sick for almost the entire month of January and spent the majority of February trying to catch up!

My weight lost came to a grinding halt right after Christmas, mostly because I fell off the wagon and it backed up and pulled forward a few times running me over. When I was sick, all I wanted to eat was bread and chocolate (translate: comfort food!) and that is pretty much what I did. I also did not excercise because I am pretty much always anemic and when I excercise if I am not completely over a cold or illness, I deplete my immune system even further and am sick longer. Excuses aside, I pretty much blew off my eating and excercise plan for six weeks.

However, after excercising for the past week and a half I have lost two pounds and am in a size 6!! I went shopping yesterday and actually had trouble finding something SMALL enough!!!! Talk about a weird feeling, I felt like I was in the twilight zone. I almost pinched myself but I bruise like a grape so I decided just to accept it and be happy instead. My total weight loss is now 91 pounds and I only have 13 to go, WOW!!

My hubby is wanting something to kick start his weight loss so I think as the weather gets nicer we will arrange a schedule where we walk in the evenings together.

Also, my hair loss has stopped and I have 2-3 inches of new growth popping up everywhere. If I pull my hair back I look like a Chia Pet because all the new stuff sticks up everywhere! On one side of my head I have a relatively large patch that has grown back that I have dubbed my "koala ear" because it looks like I am growing a koala bear ear out of the side of my head! It is annoying to have stringy hair at the ends and fuller at my scalp but hey, at least it's growing back & I don't pull out fistfuls of hair anymore!

Anyway, hope everyone is doing well and hopefully I will have time to participate on the boards again & catch up on the goings on.

Thanks for reading!

Today is officially six months and I am down 81 pounds!! It is so wild that I have lost that much in such a short time! I put up a new avatar but I have to play with the pictures some more so I actually look like me. Even in these blurry disasters you can see a dramatic difference, I actually have a jaw line now!

I went on vacation right after Christmas and actually gained a pound & my husband said he was a bit relieved that I could gain weight. He has been worried lately that I will keep losing and end up too thin. When we met I was very heavy so this is new to him & while he likes the new bod, he does not want me to sacrifice my health. I really like that he expresses his concerns & that we can talk about them because he is sort of getting dragged along on my journey with me and I do not want our relationship to suffer, I want it to grow so that we can achieve our goal of growing old together.  It means so much to me to have such a wonderful support system.

After we returned from vacation, I went shopping to return an excercise outfit he bought me that was too big. After trying on different sizes I wound up with a MEDIUM, wow!! I haven't worn anythin with an "M" since my twenties!! I also bought four pairs of pants that are a size 8, holy crap!! These were quite snug but the size 10s that I bought a few weeks ago were too and now they fit perfectly so I am not concerned.

My honey and I actually jogged together for a little bit over my two week vacation and the next day he was commenting on how sore he was & I didn't feel any tightness at all. I was a little winded because I don't jog & have no conditioning for it but my knees and muscles all felt just fine, it was a great feeling.

Over Christmas my family was very suprised at how I looked. Most of them knew about my surgery & they had questions and concerns about my nutritional health. Once I explained that I made sure to get the proper nutrition and was probably healthier now than I had ever been, everyone was really supportive. This was one of the best family visits I have had in years because for once I did not feel like the "fat one". No one has ever said anything to make me feel that way, it was just that I was so embarassed because I was by far the largest person in my family & I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb.

All in all it has been a great six months and now that the holdiays are over I hope to put the weight loss into high gear without all of the temptations laying around! 

Happy New Year to all and I hope this year brings successes to everyone!

Wow am I having a great weekend! Yesterday I went shopping in the Junior's department at Mervyn's and actually found stuff that fit! I'm now fitting into a size 10!!! It's very snug of course but I lost my requisite two pounds this week so I'm sure they will be perfect in no time.

Sold a bunch of my glass & jewelry last week so I had some extra Christmas spending money & that felt great. People keep asking me "do you have any new stuff yet?" so I have to get going and make some more today to replenish stock before we have our Christmas break.

My hubby is making grumblings like he wants me to stop losing, he has never seen me this thin so he's not used to it and is getting a bit nervous. I reassured him that I do not want to look like Nicole Ritchie did before she got preggers, I just want to be at a healthy weight. No one in my family has seen me since the surgery so they are going to get quite a shock when I walk through the door on Christmas Eve, I can't wait!

Wow! I can't believe it has been five months already, it has really flown by!

Well, here are the statistics so far: I have lost 71 pounds ! Have gone from a size 20 to a size 12, and the 12's are a little loose. Have gone from a size 1x shirt to a size L.

I had a really interesting experience when I went to the mall the other day to do my Christmas shopping for family and friends. I was walking past all of the clothing stores and it dawned on me that I could actually go into any one of those stores and find something that would fit! I can't tell you what a great feeling that was. It was like blinders had been taken off. Instead of just walking into Lane Bryant and ignoring every other store because there was no way in Hades I could even get one leg into a pair of pants in a regular store, I could actually stop and decide if I WANTED to try anything on. What a great feeling that was!

I am getting a lot of compliments from people at work and now it is from people who I don't see very often. I actually had someone ask me if I was getting taller too! I said "no, I'm just not as round so I seem taller"!

My hubby loves the new body also, I won't go too far into that for my reader's sake! Even though he likes the new changes there have been some adjustments to be made for both of us. I say this for anyone who is a newbie or pre-op to let you know that even if you have a fantasic marriage, you will still both have to deal with all of the emotional and physical changes. For example, I have a really bad habit of "living in my head" too much. I never really had anyone to rely on to help me with problems so I just dealt with things on my own. Now I am finding that by doing that with all of the changes I have been going through for the last five months, I am alienating my husband and he feels left out. He has told me that he wants to be there on my journey and I really have left him out in a lot of ways. I just thought he would get sick of hearing about stuff so I didn't really say anything but now I see that I was leaving him out of a very big and important part of my life. Since we talked about this things have been great and I am making a point to let him know everything that is going on. The latest thing is my fascination with the fact that I can feel all the bones in my shoulders! I sit on the couch while watching TV just feeling the bones in my upper arm and shoulders, simply because I can! My hubby and son think I'm nuts!

Well I'll wrap this up because I really do need to get some work done today, hopefully this weekend I will be able to post some updated pictures.

It has officially been four months since my surgery and I have lost 63 pounds! Hard to believe that it has been such a short time and I have lost so much weight. I kind of hit a stall last week and was going into that "this is all I am going to lose" type of thinking until I took my measurements (I do this every Sunday) and then I lost another pound this morning.

Had a very odd thing happen last week, I went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of pastries for my boss' birthday. This grocery store also has a Starbuck's in it and before I had my surgery I would go in almost every morning and get a mocha and a pastry for breakfast and then of course mentally punish myself and feel guilty because I knew that I was putting a huge amount of calories in my body that I didn't need (not to mention the astronomical cost!). Well, I did not get anything for myself this trip, only the pastries for my boss except for the fact that when I got to work I was feeling very down and guilty and I told myself "well, face the music and write down what you ate so you'll know your calorie count at the end of the day". Then I realized, I hadn't eaten any of the pastries, and I didn't have a high calorie coffee drink, but my brain was so caught up in the guilt cycle that I truly thought I had! This was such an eye opener for me and it made me wonder how much of my hunger was head hunger and did I really even know when I was physcially hungry? Since then I feel like I have had shackles taken off of me & I am really paying attention to the difference between head hunger and physical hunger. This should tell you how deeply ingrained habits can be if I am just now having this awareness after four months!!

I am still losing hair although I can see new hair growth, the thing that sucks is all of the new hair is coming in grey (DAMMIT!). My weight loss is very noticible and many of my co-workers are stopping me and making it a point to mention it. All are very positive, I haven't had anyone interrogate me about my surgery or give me any negativity, to my face anyway, and for those not courageous enough to express a negative opinion to my face, they aren't worth my time so to heck with them!

I am 182 today and I have a goal to be 180 by my next Dr. appt on 11/27 so I should have no problem making that. I will see my group of friends this weekend and they have not seen me since August so the reaction should be interesting!

I have officially hit the 60 lb loss, I had a mini goal to do this by my four month surgiversary and I made it with time to spare! 

I am feeling great, still losing some hair but not nearly as much, probably because I don't have all that much left to lose! I think I should start naming my hairballs, I'm starting to have separation anxiety.

I am still struggling with my food choices, I am trying to stick to my plan but I am suffering a bit with carb creep. The more I eat the more I crave so this week I have made a concerted effort to record my food intake, make sure I get protien and water and resist the temptation for sweets. It is getting to be the season at work so people keep bringing in things I should not eat & it is very difficult to resist, especially when co-workers think that you are being rude by not participating. I feel like screaming, "I did not spend 16 grand to blow it, please understand that I'd like to join the party but it is just too tempting!" Obviously the people doing this are skinny and just say, "you don't have to eat, just stop in". If I had the willpower to do that, I wouldn't be so fat!!
Anyway, (climbs down of her soapbox) so far my additional efforts seem to be working because I have lost three pounds this week. Exercise is helping also.

Many more people at work are beginning to notice my weight loss and ask about it openly, and compliment me. I don't mind sharing, as it is a confirmation that I am achieving my goals. It is really funny to be referred to as "skinny" when you weigh 185! One of the guys I work with asked me how much weight I had lost so far and I told him 60 lbs. He was really suprised and said "wow, I didn't realize it was that much." Most of the people that I have told my highest weight to were shocked. I guess I carry it all over so I didn't look like I weighed that much but believe me I felt every pound of it!

Being noticed is a double edged sword for me because I am shy by nature and I hate being the center of attention so I am having to deal with anxiety there, not to mention the holidays are coming and for some reason I have a lot of anxiety there too. I used to work very hard to just blend in and become invisible so people wouldn't notice me, being large helped with that because people didn't really want to notice me. Now I am starting to have to face my fears about that and I think the food choices I am struggling with have a lot to do with this.

My husband is also having some issues too, not that he is not supportive, he is very proud of me, but he wants to lose some weight & the scale will not budge for him. I told him to write down everything he eats for a while, it is really an eye opener to exactly how much you are actually eating. He said he'd give it a try so we will see how it goes.

Here are some more mini-goals I have set for myself:

Be down 65 lbs by 11/30/07 (next Dr. Appt) Weight would be 180.

Be down 77 lbs by 12/5/07 (6 mo. surgiversary) - this is 70% of the weight I total weight I want to lose which was what my Dr. suggested as my target. Weight would be 168.

Hooray! This morning I hit the halfway point! I really wanted to do that on my three month surgiversary but oh well, I'll take it!!

The pants I just bought are starting to get loose on me already. I went shopping in my closet this weekend and found three more pairs of pants so that was exciting! I now only have one pair of pants in the closet that don't fit and those are a size 7 so that will be a little while before I can fit into those.

I think I'm going to have to invest in a belt soon because the smallest size I have in work clothes is 14, I have one pair of jeans that is a size 12, I can't wear jeans to work all of the time so I guess I have a shopping trip coming up.

Anyway, my next milestone is to hit 180 before my next doctor's appointment on 11/30, I think that 10 pounds in six weeks is doable as long as I stick to my plan. I can't wait to see my group of friends again, I think I have lost 25 pounds since the last time I saw them so it should be interesting!

It has been three months today and have lost 52 pounds. It feels like it has been longer and if I didn't get full so fast I wouldn't even feel like I had surgery.

I can tolerate pretty much anything except straight sugar. I have not thrown up, but eating things like frosting or too much candy makes me nauseous so that is a great deterrent!

I joined curves a month ago and by their scale lost 15 pounds and 12 inches in one month, not too bad! I love my new avatar, it looks more like the happy person that I am.

I have officially started the hair loss phase and if I wanted to, I could probably knit everyone I know a "Candace Sweater" for Christmas!!! I'm not worried though, in my 20's I was so stressed out hair practically jumped off my head and you couldn't tell so there is no risk of me going bald anytime soon.

I am struggling a bit to keep on track with my food. I definitely feel hunger, although it is a bit different and I do not get the drastic blood sugar plummet like I used to. The temptation to eat fast food, chips, popcorn (my worst achilles heel!), and candy is great but I have found that sometimes when I give in to that, it doesn't taste nearly as good as I think it will so the craving lessens.

One good thing is I don't drink soda anymore. I have craved it a couple of times and taken a sip or two but every time I have it has tasted so disgusting that I have absolutely no desire for it anymore! I drink more water now than I ever have in my life which is good.

I had a bit of trouble finding out where full was for a while. I was so afraid that I would make myself puke that I never really got completely full and I was hungry every two hours. Now I am a bit more patient and take more time eating so that I can get to the full point (most of the time) and be satisfied for about four hours or so. I am also learning when I eat out not to order a full entree unless I want a lot of leftovers. My husband has agreed that if we share, he will eat less, which he does not mind, and it would be more economical.

I do need to work on emotional issues as I used food to stuff them down and now I really can't do that anymore. I am a lousy communicator so I do not share my feelings very well & am in limbo about how to do that. I suppose that will rectify itself pretty soon, as I will have a meltdown & my hubby will may say "Get thee to a therapist, Woman!" 

Well, this novel has gone on long enough so I'll post more next month or at the halfway point, whichever happens first. I vote for the halfway point!