Voila!
So I've gone back to my old design, I kinda missed it and I think it better fits my weather and mood. Anyway, I've started like 15 posts over the last week, but haven't actually posted anything. Seems like there is always something popping up to distract me and I'm easily distract-able. I had a doctor's appointment Monday to get labs done, it's been awhile and I'm still trying to figure out why I tend to retain so much water. Monday morning, I weighed in at 270 or so, today it's down to 263. It's frustrating because the day I got back from Texas I weighed in at 253 and that was at night and I'm always 5-6 lbs heavier during the day than when I weigh post-poop in the AM. I have no idea what my true weight is, I'm guessing somewhere in the mid 240's because I first weighed 250-ish way back in early April.
If I weren't retaining so much water right now, I'd probably be 95% happy with my weight loss to be totally honest. Losing 265+ lbs is no small feat, so I feel like a success in that regard, but with water weight and feeling it in my legs and abdomen, it makes me feel fat, which is something I do not want to feel. I know it's a protein problem and it's a difficult one to manage. Subconsciously I haven't accepted the fact that I do need to drink 2-3 protein shakes a day, I just can't get by on food alone. Sucks, but I just have to accept it, which is a difficult, I can be hard-headed at times. The goal is still sub-200 lbs. I've become a bit comfortable lately and have lost a bit of the fire I had, that happens when you're close to 2 years out. I know my DS still works, my poop tells me so, so it's just a matter of getting the fire back again and making better decisions. I have this little placard on the wall in my office that reads "CHOOSE BETTER - 199.0". I've been ignoring it lately, but need to drill it in my brain. I'm drinking my three 50+ gram shakes a day and eating three small meals averaging around 250+ grams of protein a day. I'm also making my way through a gallon of water and trying to keep my carbs below 50.
At my Dr.'s appointment, she agreed with me and reduced my BP meds and I feel so much better. No more lightheadedness when I stand up. When they checked it was 100/60 which is around what I had gotten when I checked myself a couple weeks ago, the lowest was 92/54. I'm hoping to be off the meds completely at some point this year. It's the one thing that I'm a little bit disappointed in because I hear about so many people getting of their blood pressure medication soon after surgery, for me, such was not the case, but I know it'll happen in due time.
I have two pairs of size 16 Medium pants that I acquired from a clothes exchange after one of my support group meetings. I can barely get them on but can not zip nor button them. What a freakin' trip. It just boggles the mind that I will soon be wearing a size 16! Craziness. It doesn't even seem real. The crazy part is that my thunder thighs actually fit in the pants, they were tight, but they fit. I wonder how they'll fit after I get rid of the water weight, hopefully by the end of the month.
Today, I have the last lesson of my tennis clinic, but do not fear, the second clinic, I believe, starts immediately afterwards. It's supposed to be 96° today. I'm loving it since I'm usually freezing.
Jules asked about a typical food day for me before surgery and I'm assuming a typical day before I ever thought about surgery and here it goes. I was a big eater and I loved to eat. Okay, typical day...one of my favorite things for breakfast were bacon, egg and cheese burritos. I would fry up 4 slices of thick sliced bacon and put it aside, then I would scramble 3 eggs in the bacon grease and put that aside, I would then heat up two large flour tortillas in any residual bacon grease or additional butter and then assemble two burritos each with 2 slices of bacon, 1/2 of the scrambled eggs and 2 slices of cheese. For lunch, I might have a super-sized fast food meal, like a double quarter pounder with cheese - super-sized or some similar variation. For dinner, I loved pasta and rice and lots of it so it was usually some variation of that. Sometimes, I would just repeat breakfast. Of course there were snacks, I may have a candy bar or two throughout the day, chips, cookies from the vending machine, etc. I have long given up soft drinks with sugar so that wasn't something I gained weight on.
What really did me in was what I would do on the weekends. Weekends for me were times where I spend them on the coach in a carb-induced coma. After work on Fridays, I would go to the grocery store and buy a varying array of crap, a couple of dozen Krispy Kremes, a pie, two 1/2 gallon of ice cream or something like that. I would then spend Friday night to Sunday night on my couch watching TV, this was especially the case during lonelier times. I can still remember, quite vividly, what the carb-fog felt like, almost like semi-consciousness, being awake, but not. I definitely know why I got fat, not a mystery at all. The problem was exacerbated by my chronic anemia which I was not vigilant about keeping in check. I frankly did not have the energy to do anything besides what I needed to do. Those two things were near deadly for me, but still in the first 7 years I had been in Atlanta, I gained maybe 50-60 lbs to around 450 or so. It wasn't until I started by business that the weight piled on big time. When I started at a startup company, with two years, I gained to like 485, but by the time I started my own company I had gotten down to maybe 440 or so and that was in March 2005, by the time I had my DS in Aug 2006, I had gained almost 80 lbs from spending almost every waking hour at my computer grazing and snacking all day long. Horrible. That got me to over 500+ lbs. The scary thing is that without my DS, I'm afraid to even think what kind of condition I would be in. God only knows. I never thought I was near death when I weighed 500 lbs, but I saw myself as being on the brink of being homebound, unable to do for myself. I could easily be a 600+ lb diabetic by now, instead I'm sitting here in a size large t-shirt and a pair of size 18 shorts anxiously awaiting the time for me to run out the door for my tennis lesson!
I'm so, so very grateful I was able to have my surgery. I know I am an extremely atypical weight loss surgery patient. Not too many of us get that big, in fact I'm currently just 10-20 lbs below where most people seem to start off! I just went another giant pile of clothes yesterday to take to Goodwill and was reminded of just how big I was, I won't sit here and say I had forgotten how big, but it's becoming less and less familiar to me. It's only when I am confronted with remnants of my old self (pictures, clothes, etc.) that I am reminded just how far I've come. Just 60-70 more lbs and I'll be done!
On the supplements front, I'd recently ordered some Upcal-D. I love this stuff and it's much less expensive than going through 4-5 bottles of the Twinlab chewables a month. I drop a scoop in my protein shakes and or sugar-free drink and I'm good to go! The only problem is that it seems to not have the amount of elemental calcium it is purported to have. Sucks! I can go back to the Chewables, but maybe I'll just rotate the two.
Anyway, enough rambling for now for me, once I get started, it's hard to stop...especially when I haven't posted in awhile.
If I weren't retaining so much water right now, I'd probably be 95% happy with my weight loss to be totally honest. Losing 265+ lbs is no small feat, so I feel like a success in that regard, but with water weight and feeling it in my legs and abdomen, it makes me feel fat, which is something I do not want to feel. I know it's a protein problem and it's a difficult one to manage. Subconsciously I haven't accepted the fact that I do need to drink 2-3 protein shakes a day, I just can't get by on food alone. Sucks, but I just have to accept it, which is a difficult, I can be hard-headed at times. The goal is still sub-200 lbs. I've become a bit comfortable lately and have lost a bit of the fire I had, that happens when you're close to 2 years out. I know my DS still works, my poop tells me so, so it's just a matter of getting the fire back again and making better decisions. I have this little placard on the wall in my office that reads "CHOOSE BETTER - 199.0". I've been ignoring it lately, but need to drill it in my brain. I'm drinking my three 50+ gram shakes a day and eating three small meals averaging around 250+ grams of protein a day. I'm also making my way through a gallon of water and trying to keep my carbs below 50.
At my Dr.'s appointment, she agreed with me and reduced my BP meds and I feel so much better. No more lightheadedness when I stand up. When they checked it was 100/60 which is around what I had gotten when I checked myself a couple weeks ago, the lowest was 92/54. I'm hoping to be off the meds completely at some point this year. It's the one thing that I'm a little bit disappointed in because I hear about so many people getting of their blood pressure medication soon after surgery, for me, such was not the case, but I know it'll happen in due time.
I have two pairs of size 16 Medium pants that I acquired from a clothes exchange after one of my support group meetings. I can barely get them on but can not zip nor button them. What a freakin' trip. It just boggles the mind that I will soon be wearing a size 16! Craziness. It doesn't even seem real. The crazy part is that my thunder thighs actually fit in the pants, they were tight, but they fit. I wonder how they'll fit after I get rid of the water weight, hopefully by the end of the month.
Today, I have the last lesson of my tennis clinic, but do not fear, the second clinic, I believe, starts immediately afterwards. It's supposed to be 96° today. I'm loving it since I'm usually freezing.
Jules asked about a typical food day for me before surgery and I'm assuming a typical day before I ever thought about surgery and here it goes. I was a big eater and I loved to eat. Okay, typical day...one of my favorite things for breakfast were bacon, egg and cheese burritos. I would fry up 4 slices of thick sliced bacon and put it aside, then I would scramble 3 eggs in the bacon grease and put that aside, I would then heat up two large flour tortillas in any residual bacon grease or additional butter and then assemble two burritos each with 2 slices of bacon, 1/2 of the scrambled eggs and 2 slices of cheese. For lunch, I might have a super-sized fast food meal, like a double quarter pounder with cheese - super-sized or some similar variation. For dinner, I loved pasta and rice and lots of it so it was usually some variation of that. Sometimes, I would just repeat breakfast. Of course there were snacks, I may have a candy bar or two throughout the day, chips, cookies from the vending machine, etc. I have long given up soft drinks with sugar so that wasn't something I gained weight on.
What really did me in was what I would do on the weekends. Weekends for me were times where I spend them on the coach in a carb-induced coma. After work on Fridays, I would go to the grocery store and buy a varying array of crap, a couple of dozen Krispy Kremes, a pie, two 1/2 gallon of ice cream or something like that. I would then spend Friday night to Sunday night on my couch watching TV, this was especially the case during lonelier times. I can still remember, quite vividly, what the carb-fog felt like, almost like semi-consciousness, being awake, but not. I definitely know why I got fat, not a mystery at all. The problem was exacerbated by my chronic anemia which I was not vigilant about keeping in check. I frankly did not have the energy to do anything besides what I needed to do. Those two things were near deadly for me, but still in the first 7 years I had been in Atlanta, I gained maybe 50-60 lbs to around 450 or so. It wasn't until I started by business that the weight piled on big time. When I started at a startup company, with two years, I gained to like 485, but by the time I started my own company I had gotten down to maybe 440 or so and that was in March 2005, by the time I had my DS in Aug 2006, I had gained almost 80 lbs from spending almost every waking hour at my computer grazing and snacking all day long. Horrible. That got me to over 500+ lbs. The scary thing is that without my DS, I'm afraid to even think what kind of condition I would be in. God only knows. I never thought I was near death when I weighed 500 lbs, but I saw myself as being on the brink of being homebound, unable to do for myself. I could easily be a 600+ lb diabetic by now, instead I'm sitting here in a size large t-shirt and a pair of size 18 shorts anxiously awaiting the time for me to run out the door for my tennis lesson!
I'm so, so very grateful I was able to have my surgery. I know I am an extremely atypical weight loss surgery patient. Not too many of us get that big, in fact I'm currently just 10-20 lbs below where most people seem to start off! I just went another giant pile of clothes yesterday to take to Goodwill and was reminded of just how big I was, I won't sit here and say I had forgotten how big, but it's becoming less and less familiar to me. It's only when I am confronted with remnants of my old self (pictures, clothes, etc.) that I am reminded just how far I've come. Just 60-70 more lbs and I'll be done!
On the supplements front, I'd recently ordered some Upcal-D. I love this stuff and it's much less expensive than going through 4-5 bottles of the Twinlab chewables a month. I drop a scoop in my protein shakes and or sugar-free drink and I'm good to go! The only problem is that it seems to not have the amount of elemental calcium it is purported to have. Sucks! I can go back to the Chewables, but maybe I'll just rotate the two.
Anyway, enough rambling for now for me, once I get started, it's hard to stop...especially when I haven't posted in awhile.
Labels: Reality Check, Scale Wars, Tennis, Water weight
POSTED at
6/08/2008 10:40:00 AM
2 Comments:
Thanks for that, Tia. I really appreciate it.
Now go play tennis! LOL
Jules
Tia,
You have done such an amazing job! Size Large shirt and your pants...wow!!! You continue to serve as an inspiration to me. I really like the "Choose Better 199" sign, very nice.
Tiffany
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