Jenny_D

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 I haven't written in a while and that's because I've had nothing to say. I had fallen back into old habits and stopped following the rules of the tool and as a result, was at a standstill for the past 3.5 months. I lost about 5 pounds in November and a couple in December, and since then I had been teetering up and down the same 3 pounds from 183 to 180. I did not rearrange my guts to be 180 pounds!  I'm only 5'2". That's still obese for me.  

So in February I started the Couch to 5K program. Exercise was something I hadn't been motivated to do and I thought doing so would kick start me back into weight loss.  But after 6 weeks of running 3 days per week and the scale hadn't moved, I realized it was going to take more than that. I needed to get back on program.

When I started tracking again I realized how much I was doing wrong! I was appalled at myself. I was eating too many carbs - and bad ones! I was eating candy again ("Just a little won't hurt", I convinced myself). Sure I ordered my chicken sandwich grilled, but I was eating it on the white bread roll...and sneaking a few fries with it. I would have a cookie here, a few chips there. I was drinking WITH my meals. And I was always hungry! Some days my pouch felt bottomless!  Ugh!  So I decided to do the 5 Day Pouch Test.

The first two days were so hard for me that I realized just how many carbs I had been eating. Carbs are my enemy. Oh how I love them so.  But the 5DPT really helped me rediscover my tool and now I am back on track and as a bonus - the scale started moving again!  I've lost 4 pounds in the past week. I am currently 176lbs.

So now I am 78 pounds down since surgery and 92 pounds total. Only 8 pounds away from the century club! And in 4 more pounds I will officially be at the lowest weight I have been able to achieve since I got married in 1998. I can't wait!!

Oh - And I am up to running 28 minutes straight now, and that's about 2 1/4 miles at the pace I go. I signed up for a 5K on April 21st, so I have just under a month to get up to running 3.1 miles! I know I can do it! 7 weeks ago I was dying after running for 2 minutes! Woohoo! Life is grand.

So for the past couple of months I have been losing at a rate of 8 pounds per month (ppm), or 2 pounds per week. I guess that's a good healthy way to do it, but like I said last month, I thought it would come off a little faster during the first six months. To each his own rate of loss, I guess.

I'm not doing much better in the "making good choices" thing, as evidenced by the slice of Whole Wheat crust pizza I just ate for lunch. It's a better choice than the 2 slices of regular pizza I used to consume, but I need to wrap my brain around the fact that pizza in general is not a good choice. Period. Sigh. Someday...  Right now I'm still a bit weak. But I'm working on it!

So my progress is 64 pounds lost since surgery and 78 pounds lost total. I have 50 more pounds to go until goal.  At 5 months out, I'm still at a weight loss rate of 12.8ppm (post-op pounds) overall so I am very happy with that. 

This month I am going to focus on getting more exercise to up the 8ppm rate at which I have been losing for the past two months. I had set myself a goal to lose 100 pounds by the end of the year and I am 22 pounds away. That's 11ppm. For those of you who are counting, that means if I continue to lose at the current 8ppm rate, I'll only lose 16 pounds. I need to step it up to work off the additional 6 pounds in the next two months. 

I have my plans. I have my goals. I need to focus my mind on achieving it!  Happy November Everyone! 

56 pounds since surgery and 70 pounds total when including the pre-op diet.  

I get a bit scared sometimes because the weight loss has slowed a bit and that seems so soon to me. I thought the first 6 months were supposed to be the best. I also do not dump or get sick at all, so I keep catching myself sneaking a bit of this and a bit of that. I need to nip that in the bud NOW, but I don't know how to stop myself.  The other night I ate 5 twizzlers!  Now, that doesn't seem horrific in and of itself, but when you consider that I ate them after already having consumed a sugar-free cupcake and a carb smart ice cream bar...that's bad!  And I do it late at night when everyone else in the house is sleeping, which was always my problem. Closet eating. Grr!

I still track everything I eat, good and bad, on My Fitness Pal every day and the highest calorie day I've had is 1350, with the average being 900-1000, so that's not really terrible. But I don't want that 1350 number to become the norm or to keep creeping up, because that 1350 consists of too much carbs and fat. I need to get this under control before I sabotage my honeymoon period. I may need to seek professional counseling because I don't know how to stop myself.

I know the surgery wasn't on my head, but I did not rearrange my guts to let myself slip back into old habits this quickly!

I've been hovering between 198-201 (how annoying) for 2 weeks now and I know this is why. Sneaky bad carbs!  Yesterday I said, 'I am going to get back on plan and stop being lazy about my food'. And I did great all day...until bedtime. Then I ate a big handful of Pringles at 10pm while watching TV. Ugh.

Hoping for October to be a better month, but with Halloween candy in my house, I hope I can be strong.

Let me tell you - It was torture being on vacation all week and not having a scale!  I left for vacation at 202 and with the amount of walking I did at Disney all week, I just KNEW I had to have chiseled that "2" off the beginning of my weight. And I did!

We got back last night and the torturous week with no scale paid off when I stepped on it this morning and it read 199!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Sayonara TWOterville! I am going to work hard for the rest of my life to make damn sure I never go back there again!

I felt great all week too! I had lots of energy for all that walking around the parks and I fit comfortable on all the rides with my little ones! It was an absolutely wonderful vacation in every way!

69 down...59 to go...

I did it! I met my goal of losing half my excess weight before vacation! Hooray! 

I am now down 50 pounds since surgery and 64 pounds overall!  I have never been as happy to be 204 as I am now. LOL! 5 pounds to go until glorious ONEderland!

Today is a good day.

 

Three months and one week, technically, but I am pretty happy with my results so far. I'm down 49 pounds since surgery and 63 pounds overall. I am just ONE pound away from having lost HALF of my excess weight. I am pleased.

With the next pound that comes off, assuming I can accomplish that by September 16th, I will have met my next small goal of getting to the halfway mark by the time we go on our Disney World vacation!  Hooray!  My goal was to get to either the halfway mark OR hit Onederland by then. I am now 6 pounds away from Onederland so while that achievement is a bit more of a stretch with only 10 days to go, I'm pretty close. I am pleased. 

Today my exercise buddy cancelled on me and I exercised anyway, which is a first. We've only been at this for 22 possible exercise days and she has cancelled 12 of them. Since we walk in the dark at 5am, I don't go by myself. I just sleep in when she cancels. Today I got up and got my butt on my treadmill instead. So 'yay me'! I overcame my biggest obstacle...my own laziness. Hopefully I can keep that up!

Have a fabulous day! 

So I got motivated to start exercising thanks to a good friend who asked a simple question - "Hey, would you be interested in getting up early with me and walking?"  As much as I wanted to say no to the 5am start time, I knew that this was the motivation I needed. If I didn't walk with her, I was letting HER down. She can't walk in the dark at 5am by herself. So we started walking together and I feel great. 

I was so upset two weeks ago about only having lost 11 pounds in a month, but since then I've lost another 10 pounds.  In two weeks! A pair of shorts I bought last month are already falling off my waist. Yay!

I feel great, I'm rocking my tool, and I am confident that I am going to make my goal of either being halfway to goal (@204) or being in Onederland by the time we go to Disney World in Mid-September.  I've only got 7 pounds to go to reach my halfway mark and 12 pounds to go until Onederland. And I have a month to get there. It would be awesome to need to buy some new clothes for the trip. ;)

I can do this! What a difference two weeks makes!

I'd be lying if I didn't say I was a bit disappointed.  I was 22 pounds down at one month, so I've only lost 11 pounds this month. With it only being my second month, I definitely expected to lose more. Especially since I weigh the same today as I did one week ago.  Heck, I expected to lose more last month too. My weight loss is very slow. I go a week with no change and then drop a pound or two.  I was really hoping to lose 3 measley more pounds this month as that would have brought me to my next milestone - no longer having a Morbidly Obese BMI! In three pounds I'll just be plain ol' Obese. :) 

I'm not making bad food choices. If anything, my NUT said I need to eat more carbs. She said my diet was TOO protein heavy and "Atkins-like" after she reviewed my food journal. I'm getting on average 700 calories per day, sometimes 500 on a grouchy pouch day.

I need to exercise. That is something  that I have slacked on. I can't seem to find the time or the motivation. With a full-time job and two preschoolers, free time is minimal. when it comes at the end of the day, I'm too exhausted. I'm going to have to resolve myself to get up extra early in the AM and exercise before the kids get up. I'm so not a morning person, so that is going to take significant motivation that I don't have. Maybe this month's disappointment will be motivation enough. We'll see what happens when the alarm goes off tomorrow. ;)

Little milestones mean a lot to me. It's how I keep motivated. So today I am 42 days out from surgery and 43 pounds down (including 14lbs lost pre-op). I still have 85 pounds to lose to reach my goal, so that means I have officially lost 1/3 of my excess weight.

My 4 year old daughter weighs 40lbs. When I pick her up now, I can't imagine how I carried that much excess weight around 24/7, and I still have two more of her to lose!!  I'm going to feel so light on my feet.

I can't wait. Is it sick that I find this whole RNY process fascinating and almost fun? Even though I threw up last night? Haha.

Whew. I know my journey has really only just begun, but it feels good to be at the one month mark. I've had a pretty smooth ride so far with no major complications and no food issues.

I've had the foamies, I had something feel stuck, but I have not thrown up. All my issues came from eating too much too fast. I have to continue to work on that.

The hardest part to this has been not drinking while I eat. I'm a thirsty girl. Always have been. I would easily guzzle down a 20oz drink with my meals. Now it's torture to not drink anything 30 minutes either side of my meals. I wake up in the AM and I want to suck down a glass of OJ, but a) no OJ allowed and b) I have to eat first so I cannot drink. I feel parched! And it feels like my food sits stuck in my esophogus because I can't wash it down. Ugh.

I went through the dreaded early stall and it lasted two weeks: Day 16 - Day 29. It was torture. I make this HUGE commitment and rearrange my guts and the scale doesn't move?!? Annoying, to say the least. And I know all the physiology behind it (see my last blog) and I know I shouldn't step on the scale daily, but whatever. Show me any newbie that isn't obsessed with the scale. All the vets are the first to crow about avoiding the scale, but if they were to dig back into their memories, I'm sure they were once there too. Easier said then done when you're in this stage.

I'm on soft foods for the next two weeks and then I start a regular diet, but I can't imagine it being too different just yet. I am eating burger and chicken and whole grain bread occasionally already, and I will not be ready to attempt steak anytime soon, so I don't anticipate a big transition.

I'm just glad to be at the point where the weight loss is noticable both outwardly and inwardly. (Are those words?) People are noticing and I feel better physically. My knees don't hurt anymore and my feet are not swelling every day. My previously most comfy pair of shoes for work are now too big to wear. They slide off. My 22's are loose and I can fit into my 20's.

Hooray for RNY!