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.