A Thin Girl Inside a Fat Chick!

Don’t take the title too seriously folks! I’m starting this post with a disclaimer and excusing myself ahead of time for my slightly off, a little raunchy, and highly sarcastic brand of humor.  It is what has gotten me through life since I expanded my vocabulary beyond one syllable words.  Without it I most certainly would not be the lovable person I am today! ?

So here is my list of “hazards” at almost four months out and 50+ lbs down:

You will discover room in your pants, which quite possibly you could fit another person in.  I can already fit myself into one leg of my pj pants up to mid thigh! ?

The seatbelt is not trying to kill you any longer.  I know mine is no longer trying to strangle me when I drive.

You may discover, if you are female and like to free the tatas every once in awhile, that cooking can become a hazard.  Ladies there will now be two individual breasts, you will have space between your cleavage.  This my friends can mean that if you are tasting hot Spanich rice to make sure you got the flavor right it could fall into that space and give you two small 2nd degree burns.  Yes this is a true hazard and no I couldn’t make that up if I tried, but yeah it’s pretty damn funny!

You will rediscover body parts you may not have seen in awhile and it may not be pretty.  Never fear this will get better I promise you will not faint when you look in the mirror.

Holy self esteem Batman!!! This will increase tremendously.

Do not be afraid to take flight with the bat wings you’ll probably have under your arms. Love them, embrace them, work them out to death and they will probably slowly disappear to maybe hummingbird wings.

There will be more room in the shower for naughty things ? Couple that with having incredible sex and I think your set for life!

Your energy levels will be crazy! Some days you’ll feel like a super hero on steroids!!!

The biggest thing is everything just feels easier.  All those daily functions of life don’t feel like such a chore anymore.

Now I could probably go on forever with this list, but I think I’ve subjected you to enough.  Hope you enjoy—happy reading.

Holy aching tailbone my friends! I guess my derriere has lost a lot of its padding because sitting for more than an hour at a time makes me want to scream!  My coworker swears it will get better, but so far it hasn’t.  So although I enjoyed my day trips with my mom this week, sitting on a pillow or my sweatshirt just wasn’t doing it.  If anyone out there knows this feeling please please give me some ideas for alleviating my sore rear we’d both be very grateful.

I noticed something else this week, before surgery I really loved to go out to eat and I do still like it, but it’s such a chore to decide what would be ok with my stomach to eat.  My mom was good we shared a lot, normally she cooks but she didn’t want to be in the kitchen all week and I don’t blame her.  One night my parents wanted pizza, which I have not eaten yet, so I had to look for something else and I realized that portion sizes are out of control.  What I ordered could easily feed 3 to 4 people.  I even took a glance at the table across from us, this man had a cheesesteak in front of him that could feed me for a month!!! No wonder Americans are trending to the heavier side.  We go out on a regular basis, a lot of us don’t cook, they serve us endless apps and portion sizes that could feed a small army and society wonders why most of us are on the heavy side.  Europeans most definitely do not eat like Americans.  I was in Italy a few years ago and yes they love their pasta, but the pasta is more like an appetizer and it’s a small portion like a taste and then you go on to the rest of your meal, which I may add is not a supersized portion of guilt.  That being said I can’t say I ate healthy over this past week with my parents, it was definitely an experience of the difficulty with eating out when your stomach is the size of a banana.  Until next time happy reading!

“Addiction” is everywhere, all over the tv, the radio, plastered to bill boards and you may ask yourself “what does this have to do with a woman who blogs about her life with a gastric sleeve.”  Well it has everything to do with it.  I would not have gotten this way if I didn’t have my demons.

The dictionary definition of addiction is “the fact or condition of being addicted to a particular substance, thing, or activity.
Devotion to, dedication to, obsession with, infatuation with, passion for, love of, mania for, enslavement to.”  That being said food can be just as devastating an issue as alcohol and drugs.  Many of you reading this already know me on a personal level and know there are addiction demons in my family.  Recently I had to shall we say “adult up” and take care of my father who was in the hospital for a week because of his demons.  I’m pretty sure no one in my family wants to discuss this publicly, but I’m far from ashamed.  Over the course of the past week I discovered through my aunt, my dad’s younger sister that not only was she an alcoholic but so is my father’s older sister; not to mention the reason they never saw any of my Grandpa’s family as kids was because they were all alcoholics.  Talking to my father about this I told him flat out he needed help and that my demons weren’t alcohol and drugs, but food and I’ve tried so hard to deal with that.

My surgery was definitely a way for me to conquer these demons that seem to plague at least one side of my family.  Food addiction is a very real thing.  Eating is the only thing you have control of and the food must have a chemical effect on the brain that makes you feel better. The only problem is that in making yourself feel better you could slowly be killing yourself just like any other drug or alcohol addiction.

I may have mentioned before that I was a closet binge eater.  I would just mindlessly eat and then consciously fast over feeling guilty that I’d just stuffed myself to the point of bursting. While I was eating it really was “mindless,” just this incredible numbness where I didn’t have to think about any of the crap I was dealing with.  It was the same feeling I have when I’m getting tattooed I just go somewhere else I don’t concentrate on the pain or the noise, I honestly don’t feel anything my eyes are closed and I’m just in this blank peaceful place.  Only thing is that peaceful place with eating was making my life crazy difficult.

So what’s the purpose of me writing this little blurb?  I’m not sure myself, maybe it’s my form or therapy.  Maybe it’s my way of justifying the behavior that leads to addiction I really don’t know, but happy reading and feel free to share any comments you may have. ?

My 2 month follow up appointment was last week and they have me down for a loss of 36 lbs!! ???I seem to be averaging about a 2 lbs a week weight loss which I suppose is good, way better than I was doing on my own.  I don’t know if I listed my stats for all of you to get an idea of where I was when I started all this and where I am now so here they are:

Heaviest weight: 290

Starting weight: 286

Current weight (as of 9:30 this am): 246

My hardest thing has been exercise and, now that I’m cleared to start eating like a normal human being, beating the carb monster.  I am a carb addict I will freely admit that if give the choice between veggies and cheese doodles–those cheese doodles are a hell of a lot more enticing than veggies.  When my mom was here for my surgery we did a pretty good sweep of the pantry, and got rid of a lot of junk food plus donated anything I wouldn’t be eating for awhile needless to say the pantry is pretty diet friendly.  I have had my moments of weakness like Pringles and Popcorners.  Of course I can only eat so many one bite too much and I basically feel like I want to die.  I discovered the staple of the American bbq, potato salad, definitely doesn’t sit well after like two bites.  How can I explain this full feeling?  It’s like a weight is sitting on my chest almost in my throat.  I’ve watched many episodes of “My 600 lbs Life” and I don’t know how anyone could have a major set back or even shovel the fast food or any food for that matter down their throats without feeling like they want to die, and for me eating past that is absolutely impossible plus I try not to get to that feeling in the first place.

My activity and energy level is much better.  I’ve done more exercise in the past couple weeks than I have in a long time.  Things like gardening and even walking from a farther parking spot don’t seem like such a chore.   I try to spend some time on the eliptical or exercising with one of my dvds and lifting weights is a must.  I don’t know if I’m going to get rid of my bat wings (I’m pretty sure I’m on my way to being an unmarried spinster anyway ?), but I’m certainly going to try.

My goal right now is to lower my carb intake, because of course once the nutritionist said I could have bread it was all over.  However, I have been looking for alternatives to bread that are just as good.  I’ve been meaning to make something called cloud bread, but my house being 80 degrees is cutting into my baking experiments.  My other issue:

It’s been so hard for me to get all that fluid in.  It feels like 64 fluid oz is just an impossibility for me. On a good day maybe I get in 54.  I’ve mentioned this to the doc and the nutritionist but haven’t gotten any solid answers to fix this.  So I do the best I can and some kind of fluid is glued to my side all day long and I sip, sip, sip!  Well until next time happy reading!

This is so very true, and hopefully this is my only post about said subject, but it probably won’t be.  Let me start by saying if you venture onto the path of surgical weight loss do everything the surgeon and the nutritionist say.  It’s very important to follow every detail of your post op diet and not stop drinking your protien, taking your vitamins, and eating the stage appropriate diet.  Yes you will probably get very tired of the post op diet.  There isn’t a lot of variety to mine and things that used to taste good to me before just have no flavor.  I have read that this can happen sometimes so I’m not worried.  You can get creative with what you can eat but it’s definitely not easy.

I’m 8 weeks post up coming up on another post op doctors appointment soon which will be my 9 week mark.  I’m 30 lbs down and something in me just wants so much more.  So what’s with the temptation title?  Well just because I have a smaller stomach doesn’t mean I had surgery to change the thoughts in my head.  That being said I still crave certain things.  I didn’t in the very beginning, but I do now.  Lately, it’s been things like nachos, chocolate, and french fries.  And trust me I did stray a few times from the diet and most recently it was the worst choice I’ve made over the past couple of weeks.  If you want to end up uncomfortable and probably in the bathroom don’t follow the diet and you’ll be there.

On a brighter note I did get over the exercise wall nothing too crazy walking, eliptical and lifting weights.  Doing some circuit training which is pretty fun.  And let me just tell you how much exercise a trail walk is with me, my friend, two strollers, 3 infants and my dog ?!

Post op appointment Thursday until then happy reading!

Thanks to Eric Carle’s kids book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” and my friend Erica for the inspiration for this post.  I made a rather sarcastic comment on Facebook recently about finally seeing my waist and how it’s been a log time.  Well not that long but long enough.  So why the reference to a childrens book?  It’s one of my favorites plus my friend and coworker started calling me her “hungry caterpillar.” In the childrens story the caterpillar eats and eats and eats finally making its cocoon and emerging at the end a beautiful butterfly.  It’s a good analogy for this whole process.  At first you’re a caterpillar and you’re eating everything in sight and you reach a point where you say, “hey wait I want to be a butterfly.” You go into a hibernation of sorts doing everything you need to do to prepare for surgery and you emerge a butterfly.

Mind you the butterfly part doesn’t happen as quickly as you’d like it to but it does happen.  30 lbs lost in about a month and half never would have happened any other way for me.  I’ve even gotten more active.  I’m not sure that would have happened either if I hadn’t had the surgey and didn’t want to be successful with it.  I’ve seen a couple episodes of “My 600 Pound Life” I can’t ever imagine letting myself get that way.  I was angry that I let myself get as heavy as I did in the first place.  The most recently watched episode was a follow up on a kid (don’t know how old) who went into his surgical consult at something like 986lbs!  The doc told him he had to loose 100lbs and come back in a month.  This kids eating habbits were awful and his mother was not helping the situation he went back and was 1002 lbs.  Absolutely boggled my mind how this man could even be living at that weight.  To make a long story short he was hospitalized to loose weight had gastric bypass and struggled with his eating habbits and doing things for himself.  He did loose half his weight which I’m sure prolonged his life greatly, but all the stories I’ve seen on that show includig his have definitely inspired me to get way more active.

I’ve never been a fan of the gym, although it’s convenient equipment wise, I’ve always felt like people were watching me and criticizing me in their heads.  I also have a bad habbit of going for a few months and letting it fall by the wayside.  So the gym for me is out.  I had to think of what I like to do that gets you up and moving and isn’t done in the bedroom ?.  Yes that counts as exercise btw!  In any case I remembered my mom had this walking dvd and she’d pop that in if it was nasty out or even if it was late and she hadn’t gotten out to do her walk.  So I asked her for it—she couldn’t find it of course so I bought a couple of my own one of which has circuit workouts for lower and upper body that include weights.  They’re great and the plus side is I don’t have to feel like I’m being watched because I’m in the privacy of my own home.  As far as getting out to walk it’s not really ideal on back country roads with a 50 mph speed limit, but I do have a friend who wants to so at some point we will walk the kids and dogs either at the park or on the closed road near our homes.  So needless to say I think I’m getting on track, exercising, eating pretty well, and ready to go back to work.  Happy reading!  Until next time ? ?!

Hey all!  I may have mentioned this in prior posts, but before I considered weight loss surgery I was just trying to change my diet trying to eat better healthier foods.  I didn’t go crazy at first.  I started with buying better meat.  I’d heard a blurb on the news quite awhile ago about how companies add something called “pink slime” to ground beef which is sprayed with ammonia. All I could think of was the smell of ammonia being made at my grandma’s cleaning business—made me want to puke.  That being said I started buying mostly organic meat when I could get it then I started walking down the organic aisle at the food store just to see what choices they had.

Why am I mentioning this?? Quite a bit of the things I’ve eaten in the past couple of months have not been my norm. Yes this surgery is about making changes in your life and cutting back on sugar and carbs is a must.  I also understand that sugar can be a huge issue for some bariatric patients and that many are unable to tolerate large amounts, but all the sugar free junk they tell you to eat can’t be good for us either.

I’ve already found out that I really don’t tolerate erythritol, which is to my understanding a sugar alcohol that our bodies do not process and is only excreted in our urine.   My feeling sickly after ingesting it is not unlikely since I read that it does have many GI side effects.  I want to be good I want to eat the things that are on the list from the surgeon/nutritionist but since doing more reading on erythritol, and since it’s added in to so many sugar free foods I’m pretty sure I’m boycotting the sugar free thing.

A little note about stevia–yes it’s a plant and it’s super sweet, but not all stevias are the same.  Before I did any reading on artificial sweeteners I just picked a store brand off the shelf not even reading the label.  Yes I was wasteful and tossed the whole thing in the garbage because it contained erythritol.  I bought steevia in the raw instead because it does not contain erythritol and it’s non-gmo organic.

So I’m cutting out the premade sugar free foods, I barely use stevia except maybe in my decaf coffee/tea and even then it’s like a quarter of a packet.  I was poisoning my body by being heavy in the first place I don’t want to poison myself with processing gmo foods too then the weight loss for me is pointless.  Will update again soon happy reading!

Hi everyone! I’m barely over one month postop and the doc says I’m doing well, meanwhile I still feel rather crappy as far as energy is concerned and still wondering  how I’m going to manage everything when I go back to work.  What do I mean by everything you may ask?  Well I mean the million and a half vitamins plus the medication that I take on a regular basis and the three protein shakes a day.  A convenient 9-5 job would maybe help matter, but sadly I had to have unconviential nurses  hours.

I must tell you I’m becoming a little disillusioned with the whole process.  Yes it’s great, yes I’m loosing some weight, but to me it’s not anywhere near close to where I thought I’d be.  Can we say impatient.  I struggle with getting all my water/fluid in and movtivating myself to get out and exercise.  Nothing about this process has been easy.

On the bright side my pants have room in them for a small human and my boobs say “I need a new bra woman!”  So that is a plus.  I’m trying to find my exercise niche so I won’t get bored if anyone has any suggestions please feel free to comment.  Anyway I’m a little to wish you all a happy Easter, but I will anyway and happy reading!

 

Some of you may know I love to cook—if you don’t know me I love to cook ?.  It was definitely not something I always loved to do I didn’t start cooking until I moved out and that cooking was only so-so, but since then it’s gotten way better and some would say even edible.  One of my points of depression is coming from the fact that this surgery in the beginning does not lend itself to any creative cooking.  And trust me in the very beginning I didn’t feel like doing squat.  I am now up to puréed food and have been scouring pinterest and other websites to find palatable puree recipies that hopefully I can stomach.

I haven’t eaten very much in the past couple of weeks and am getting very tired of constantly needing to sip water and get in that protein.  It is however a necessary evil.  I also initially lost 20-25 lbs within 2 weeks and now nothing, but it doing some reading this seems to be pretty normal and I think I must be loosing some inches because I need to make my fitbit tighter on my wrist so something must be going on.

Back to my cooking adventure… the dietitian that works with my surgeon of course gives you sample menues and shopping lists for each stage and I do try to incorporate those items into what I should be eating, afterall this diet is about healing not about weight loss but damn it’s the blandest thing I’ve ever eaten couple that with nothing tastes the same or as good to me right now and it makes me not want to eat.  So change number one that I made today was doing a little something different with my protein drink.  I usually mixed a scoop of chocolate protein with skim milk or almond milk in the very beginning I did water now they are making me feel ? because I’ve introduced vitamins and other meds I take.  This am I made some decaf coffee put some in my shaker bottle added a scoop of chocolate protein and a little bit of premade caramel flavored protein shake and it was quite good and definitely a change.

Yesterday I tried scrambled eggs those sat well today I tried a soft boiled egg not ok I ate 3/4 of it then got that blah I’m going to puke feeling—needless to say Bella will be a happy pup this morning she will get my leftover egg plus some unsweetened apple sauce.  She is downing it as we speak.  Later I’m planning to try some baked ricotta and a pureed bariatric soup mix we’ll see how that goes.  If I make anything fabulously good I will let you all know—happy reading!

Firstly let me just say thank you all for your very encouraging comments I really appreciate them and you all for supporting me.  There is definitely an inner loneliness factor that comes from doing this that maybe I didn’t expect.  And the psychologist that came to speak at the support group was definitely right when he said that this surgery is not going to fix the problems you had before it.  If your relationship had issues before you’ll still have issues after; if you were lost before you’ll still be lost after; if your family life was only so so before it will still be the same after.

There’s a difficulty in being home constantly with only your thoughts to occupy you.  You can excercise, walk the dog, craft your thoughts are still screaming away in your head.  For me I’ve been grasping at straws to try to keep a relationship going that just isn’t working.  I’m a nurse outside my relationship I’m tired of doing it in my relationship as well.

So these thoughts…you’re going to do a lot of thinking–I have trying to think back to when I knew exactly who I was and where I wanted to go in life; trying not to regret the possible missed opportunities that could have made my life up to this point so very different.  This isn’t just about I went to a surgeon had a consult he cut away a part of my stomach and now I’m good to go.  Hell no!  This is a search and find mission–may even be a search and rescue mission who knows I haven’t figured it out yet.

I have pictures of the way I used to look a thinner, healthier version of myself at least physically.  Mentally I was probably all over the place just like I am now.  I probably mentioned I have always had a love hate relationship with food which probably partially got me to where I am now.  Listening to boys and family and sometimes friends telling me I’m fine the way I am but I’d look so much better or hotter if I just lost 10 more lbs.  It’s on my mind a lot these days the past and how it’s all led up to this.  I chose to do this because I want to be healthy, but the little devil with the halo on wants to say hey look at me what do you think now??? Of course I’m nowhere near where I want to be weight wise because that will of course take time, but one can dream.

This surgery has caused a lot of soul searching whether I was prepared for it or not.  If you aren’t ready to dig inside yourself and find out things you may not have wanted to know, then don’t have this surgery because for me it’s taken me on a wild ride so far and at times I’d like to hit the freaking breaks.  I’ve come to terms with my former binge/fast eating habbits, the loss of those I’ve loved in the past, and the toxic people I probably shouldn’t be around.

At times I feel I’m too old for this sould searching who am I what to do I want to be crap.  I’m really not.  You’re never too old to find yourself, the only part about that is you have to admit that you were lost in the first place and I most definitely was before I ventured into having this surgery.  So I suppose I should be saying let the adventure begin because I guess that’s what life is afterall an adventure…happy reading!