Happy Birthday to Me

I started this on my birthday (last Sunday, yeah me!) and never got around to finishing. I knew this would happen but I now mark traditional things like birthdays as my "new me" milestones. What am I doing this year that I wouldn't have done last year (or vice versa!). 

For instance... no need for cake on my birthday. Not even really tempted by cake.

Figuring I have a small stomach now, I decided small foods were in order. And the perfect small foods are... TEA!

Okay, I might have forgotten about the "no eating and drinking together" thing which made tea a little weird. And also the fact that breads are no longer my friends and that's most of what a tea service consists of... but still, it was nice to dress up on my birthday, meet friends at a nice hotel (The Rittenhouse, for those playing along at home) and have a civilized tea service. And it was good.

I managed to eat 3 tea sandwiches (including bread), a whole scone (even used some clotted cream... shhhh) and 2 tiny pastries. Then they brought me out an individual sized Tiffany's cake which was mostly fondant with brownie/cake inside and I had a tiny bite and then everyone got to share!

I will say that now that I'm about 7 weeks out, I'm doing pretty good at understanding what I can and can't eat from a portion perspective.

I am a little concerned that I can eat just about anything. Nothing I have had has made me have the dreaded dumping syndrome or made me feel sick. The two times I actually was sick was because I ate too much too quickly.

 I do often have that over full feeling - it's a pain in my chest and sometimes it is pretty severe. But it goes away in 5-10 minutes. But I have to stop getting to that feeling so I'm working on eating slower and taking smaller bites. It's hard when you are talking and eating or watching tv and not completely focused on eating. That's why you slip up!

But I'm forgetting the really cool thing about my birthday weekend... I finally decided I had to buy some new clothes!

After spending Saturday morning trying on every pair of "Saturday" pants I have and rejecting them all as too big to continue to wear, off to The Avenue we went. Armed with coupons, after Christmas sales and a burning desire to figure out if 35 pounds lost is really 2 sizes.

It's not quite 2 sizes - so I ended up with "now" jeans and then "later" jeans. The "later" jeans are a 20 (marked 22 but I have those same jeans in that size in my closet that fell on the "too big" pile, so SOMEONE is lying!).

I haven't worn a 20 in anything since the great Weight Watchers weight loss of... heck, I don't know... 10 years ago, probably! Yes, because it was the year that Marie and Martin got married!

Next up is clothing for the cruise vacation Beth and I are taking in 2 weeks. I tried on all my summer clothes - mostly they fit (they're big, but will do. I don't want to buy a whole new summer wardrobe and then have to buy more summer clothes when summer is actually here!). My older swimsuit will be fine for this cruise but I'll probably need another one for actual summer.

And in not-so-fun news... the dreaded stall continues. I have probably only lost 5 pounds this month, which is disappointing, but I know it's totally normal. My body needs to adjust and then I will start to lose again. I'm so anal about tracking my food and even sending to my nutritionist and she thinks it all okay. So I continue to try to eat as much protein as possible and try not to weigh myself every day!

That's all from here in weight-loss-obsession-land!

Happy New Year!

Hi to the 4 of you reading... it's been a while.  Going back to work and then the Christmas holidays have made it hard to stay in the habit of blogging what's going on.

So quick catch up:  Christmas was great!  I was able to try everything everyone else ate - yes, even the Polish herring at Christmas Eve - albeit in small bites.   It was definitely more than I ever thought I'd be able to eat at 4 weeks out.  But it helped that my Christmas hosts were awesome about understanding about my limitations.

I am a little concerned because I've reached my first plateau.  I know they are normal, but my weight loss has been stalled for over at week and just tonight I sent my food diaries to my nutritionist to see if there's something I'm doing wrong or need to change.

As you can see, I still weigh myself about every other day!

In general, I'm eating under 800 calories a day - I went as high as 1,000 on Christmas with all the snacking - but generally I'm getting my protein in and also my liquids.  Although liquids are the hardest, but that was true before surgery, too.  I'm just not a drinking kind of girl and never had been.  Really need to work on making sure that I'm always sipping something to keep those liquids in.

Tonight I was playing around on www.myfitnesspal.com, which is the site I use to track my food, weight and nutritional stats, and found someone who posted this question to the message board. I found myself hitting 'reply' before I could stop myself.  So I thought I'd share my answer here, too, since I know most of my friends and family are way too nice and polite to ask such a thing to my face.

Question:  
To those of you who have had, or have thought about having, the gastric bypass surgery, or even lap band, or anything alike... why? I'm not criticizing or anything, I'm just wondering.... why'd you do it? Or why do you WANT to do it? It's a TON of money, a LOT of pain, and you STILL have to diet - extremely, at that - and exercise after healing. Like I said, I'm not criticizing... I've thought about doing one of these surgeries myself at one point, then I researched and researched and found that the first few months (even a year or two!) you have to go on a pretty extreme diet, and ease your way into eating new foods.... if you could do that POST-op, why not just do it all by yourself anyway? How much do the surgeries REALLY help? And for those who have to lose some weight in order to even get the surgeries done... why not just continue to do it yourself instead of putting yourself through all that? 

My Answer:  
I'm 5 weeks out and I'd do it again in a heartbeat and annoyed that I didn't do it 2 years ago when my doctor suggested it. The idea that people can just "do it on their own" is one that many people who have had surgery are going to find offensive, btw. Most of us have "done it on our own" and seen the weight come back (plus!) - nearly every diet study proves this. 

For many people, a radical life style change is needed to cut the cord between your stomach and your head. There are many things about WLS that change your physiology that regaining the weight (although possible, certainly) is more difficult than when following a traditional diet plan. And on top of that things like NOT feeling hunger, having a physical reaction to eating more than you can in one sitting, and as someone mentioned being able to lose enough weight that exercise is possible - are ways that this tool can make permanent weight loss possible. 

I would never recommend the surgery for someone who didn't have a history of weight-related issues. At 41 years old, I was staring at 300 pounds, early stage diabetes and sleep apnea. I was on 5 pills a day - all weight-related. Something had to change and WLS has given me a good tool to make that change. 

I didn't do this to look better in a pair of jeans. I did it to save my life or not die prematurely.