Eighty One

Nov 05, 2009

11-05-09

One month since my last post. I am now 66 days post-op and have lost 81 pounds and falling, although at present not as fast as it was. That may be a good thing. It is amazing how much I am loosing yet scary at the same time, I don’t want to stall but I do want to stay healthy. My surgeon hasn’t really said anything about at what rate I should lose weight just that I would and rapidly, well rapidly it has been.

There have been many very cool aspects to this surgery I am hoping will inspire anyone reading this, a few weeks ago my wife and I went for a drive in the mountains, we stopped often and even hiked up a few trails for a ways to see some of the local natural attractions, something we would not have thought about doing before our surgeries, walking up and down the basement stairs to do laundry winded us to the point where we would have to sit and take a break to catch our breath and wait for our lower backs to stop hurting from the exertion. Today, I walked 3 miles and last weekend I walked 3.5 around our local lake. I find I miss walking if I don’t do it and feel guilty too, exercise is becoming part of my life and daily routine and as a result I am feeling better both physically and mentally. I took the leap of joining a gym today, I plan on starting out slowly of course and meeting with the gyms trainers to get a system started for someone at my level, it will come in handy as New England winters are harsh and not being able to exercise due to inclement weather could be a trigger for old habits to return. Another really cool thing that has happened is when I started this blog right after returning home from the hospital I was wearing a size 3-X everything and before starting the pre-op diet pushing, if not already in 4-X clothing. Some major shrinking is taking place here! I have had to buy new coat for winter, my old 3X coat was so big on me that cold air just blew up through the bottom of it when I walked, the new coat I bought is a size LARGE and fits really good, im only wondering how long it will be before its to big, the same is true for other clothing, shirts and jeans, my jeans are huge on me and I have purchased a belt hole punch to make more holes in my belts that without my pants would fall right off me,. I have even had to cut inches off the end of my belts to get them to fit into my pants properly, all that being done I will soon have to buy new pants because pulling the belts tight enough to hold my pants in place causes them to bunch and is becoming uncomfortable. Even my feet are losing weight, I looked down at them today, yes, when standing and looking down I can see my "feet", I noticed they are looking skinny. When I touch myself I can feel bone I haven't felt in many moons, my shoulders feel much thinner and I can feel my hip bones.

All of the above being written there is a strangeness to it, the clothes are not lying, the scale is not lying either, when I get on the scale I see what it reads, when I take the few new clothes I have bought out of the dryer I can see how small they look to me but when I look in the mirror I do not see this person that I am becoming, I see the old me, the very heavy me, don’t get me wrong, im still not little boy, im still a pretty big guy by anyone’s definition and that's what I see, not the guy who has lost 80 pounds and dropped three sizes. I have inquired about this here on the OH website forums and also the WLS group meetings I attend every month and people say pretty much the same thing, have the same perception of themselves that I do, some say it goes away in time and other still suffer from it, I say suffer because inside I think one of the reasons we go through this surgery is because we all want to see ourselves as thin for a change and so far I am not seeing it. Other people tell me how good I am looking and go “Oh, you have lost a lot of weight” and the signs are there, just not in the mirror yet when I look in it. Im not saying that is how it will be for those reading this but it may be so be prepared, it pisses me off at times and if I let it could be depressing, I fight that by telling myself that it’s all in my head and all the other signs that I have lost 80 pounds are there so keep moving forward.

Just to recap on some of the other things mentioned further back the head hunger I wrote about a few months back is still there but not as bad as it was and easier to control, not as overwhelming. It use to hit with a feeling of panic and now I can indentify it faster and dismiss it. That being said I get the munchies at night, im not really hungry but I guess it’s because for as long as I can remember I eat at night, settling down to watch TV in the evening I am finding to be a trigger for it and is another reason I joined a gym, its open 24 hours most days and in the evening I can go to the gym and work out the munchies literally. I still find it difficult to get all my proteins and fluids in, most nights its one or the other, if I have my proteins in I will be low on my fluids or vice versa, hunger is still not really an issue other then the head version mentioned earlier. I have found that that when going to long without eating in place of hunger pains I get a terrible forum of heartburn, acid reflux I guess it is, very unpleasant and eating makes it go away,. At times I forget to eat, I have been many things in my life but forgetful when it comes to eating has not been one of them, until now. I find the busier I am or the more I have to do the more likely I am to forget to eat, lending truth to a comparison I made earlier in my blog to a method I used to stop smoking 4.5 years ago, when a craving hits reoccupy my mind by doing something, anything other than lighting up. It works so far to a large degree with food cravings too, almost to being a negative thing in that if I forget to eat a regular meal it puts me behind on reaching my protein goals.

I have met two goals that I set for myself, one was reach 250 pounds by Thanksgiving, I have made that and one or two more almost a month before time, the other was longer term and not used as part of this site, just something I had in my own mind which is to be able to buy clothes off the rack at major department stores and I have been able to do that too. Losing 81 pounds is awesome yet I am only a little more than half way to my overall goal of 170. I cannot imagine how good it will feel to be at such a weight. I weighed more than that in high school some thirty 30 years ago or more but it’s going to be a very interesting trip getting there.

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