Pictures and more pictures

I am sooooo excited! I am again going to do a few photo sessions for friends for the holidays! Yea! Now that I have a good camera and good equipment, I am way, way ecstatic about it! Right now I have a sitting for a 3 year old, another for a whole family including that 3-year-old, and two different sittings for mother/son combos. I also possibly have another family, but am not sure. I am not charging anyone anything, I'm doing it for the fun of it and because I want to get better. Last year's efforts were okay, I wasn't too happy because as it turns out, the camera I was using was on it's last legs and actually it was out of commission within a couple of weeks. I'm hoping that this go around will be much better. So excited!

Y'know at 14 months out, I thought I could chow down pretty well, now I think it's all relative. I know our stomachs stretch after surgery and I know mine has, but honestly, I don't think it has that much. As y'all know, I'm fond of cooking food in mass quantities and dividing it up in small containers and lately I've been using these 9.5 oz plastic containers from Kroger. They are perfect. With my chilis, I fill up to around the 8.5 oz mark and I can usually eat that in one sitting, in about 15-20 minutes. I've learned from experience that eating too fast can cause dire consequences. Anyway, I read on OH about a lady who had been hankering for some Mickey D's fries and so gave in and ordered 20 nuggets, a double cheeseburger, 1 large order of fries and 3 cookies. She said she ate this in about 45 minutes, she's about 2 1/2 years post-op Duodenal Switch. Holy shit, that is amazing! I couldn't do that pre-op! I don't know if that is impressive or scary. A few weeks ago I had a McDonalds double cheeseburger and could barely finish it. Wow. She seems to be doing well, so more power to her, that's for sure. I just don't know if I want to be eating that way, I don't think I'd complain though if the weight continued to stay off. I'd like to be able to eat a normal sized meal, I'm not there just yet. It's amazing how different people are and how powerful the DS can be!

Thanksgiving is just around the corner and I'm pretty excited. I'm sticking to plan as best as I can because I plan to have some great food on that day and ONLY on that day, however I don't want to go all out crazy. There are a few things I am really looking forward to, namely the Honeybaked Ham and the mashed potatoes. I am most likely spending part of Thanksgiving at BP's house and her husband is a chef (thank you God) and the boy can cook. I absolutely love his mashed potatoes, I don't know what he does but they are delicious, buttery and even more delicious. One of my favorite things is to take ham and scoop up some mashed potatoes and eat it like that. Yum. Anyway, I'm typically in charge of a side dish and I am trying to come up with something that "normal" people will enjoy but is DS-friendly. There will be the usual suspects of turkey, dressing, fresh green beans, etc. I gotta think of something good. My initial thought is to make a baked macaroni & cheese made with Dreamfield's pasta. It should fit well with the meal and keep that day's carb count down.

I'm going to out for a walk this afternoon, get some fresh air, then come back and hope and pray my alma mater can win a freakin' football game. Good grief.

Year One

I have so many emotions running through me right now, as you can imagine. What a year! I feel really blessed and thankful and humble. You know me, I could easily blather on for pages, but I'm opting for a more easily digestible list format. :)


Before (more pictures)
Start Weight - 516.6 lbs
Shirts: 6X (men's), 42W/44W/6X (women's)
Pants: 64 (men's), 42W/44W/6X (women's)

Now
Now - 304.0 lbs (-212.6)
Shirts: XL (men's), 18W (women's)
Pants: 46 (men's), 26W (women's)

Loss of body weight: 41.15%
EWL% (surgeon's goal of 250 lbs): 79.75%
EWL% (personal goal of 199.8 lbs): 67.1%

Things I can do now that I couldn’t do before
Walk a mile or two or three or six.
Shop in real stores, not just online.
Cross my legs.
Fit in an airplane seat.
Fit in an airplane seat and not use an extender!
Fit in a booth.
Run.
Jump.
Buy $4 shirts and $10 jeans at Walmart/Target/Ross/etc.
Fit in my friend’s sportcar.
Fit in almost any chair.
Breathe easier.
Walk a flight a stairs without a second thought.
Wear a size XL t-shirt.
Adjust the steering wheel in my car.
Think optimistically about the future.

Unanticipated Things
Talking about poop so much.
Eating as much food as I do (relatively speaking) and still lose weight.
Feeling overwhelmed by clothes shopping.
Increased self-confidence and self-assurance.
Getting an ulcer.
Losing so much hair.
Discovering the color pink.
How much work it is getting in the proper nutrition/water & supplements.
How expensive post-op life is.
Inability to eat chicken with any consistency
Reduced appetite for sweets, increased appetite for savory foods.
The depth of the mind/body disconnect.
Discovering I am a stronger person than I ever thought.

Things I would have done differently
Exercised more.
Been more consistent.
Taken monthly measurements.

Hardest thing for me to learn
Patience.

Best Advice I can give to pre-ops
Be as compliant as you can for as long as you can. You will never regret it.
Assume nothing about the state of your health, get your labs done and verify.
Don’t underestimate the power of dehydration.
Don’t underestimate the power of protein malnutrition.

Gratitude
Thank you God for loving me. Thank you for giving me the words and showing me the steps.
Thank you Dr. Marchesini for saving my life and giving me such hope.
Thank you to my parents for supporting me.
The rest of my family, especially my sisters, S. and T. for being my greatest cheerleaders.
Thank you to my best friend, Scott, for well, being my best friend.
Thank you to my business partner.
Thanks to B. & N. for going to Brazil with me and helping me post-op.
Thank you to Kim for just being an inspiration and for reminding me to raise my expectations and push myself.
Thank you to my local DS Support Group homies AND my Brazilian switch brothers & sisters! You guys rock!
Thanks to all the wonderful, smart, inspiration DS folks out there who are telling their stories and from whom I’ve gained so much knowledge, support and insight: Deluzy, Ezpy, Ann, Sharon, MaryBeth.
Thank you to DuodenalSwitch.com, ObesityHelp.com, Dr. Smith’s, Dr. Marchesini’s and the Duodenal Switch Yahoo Groups for the wealth of information and your vibrant communities.

Goals for Year 2
Eat my protein, drink my water, take my supplements, go to support group, exercise.

That's it, time to dance the jig.

Balanced Diet

Today is my first day implementing my new eating strategy. First meal of the day was a 26g protein shake. Then a couple hours later, I had two scrambled eggs and two slices of bacon. For lunch, I had 1/2 a sandwich wrap. I discovered them when we had them for lunch Saturday at Jamie's house. Yum. I made them with corned beef, turkey, lettuce 1/3 ounce of cheese, mustard and wraps from Toufayan. The wraps have 13g of protein and 15g of carbs (8 grams of fiber!) per wrap. I cut one in half 'cause I knew I wasn't going to be able to eat a whole one. It made the perfect portion. I also had a snack or pork rinds, so for the day so far, I am at around 750 calories and 90 or so grams of protein. I am going to have some watermelon later for a snack and for dinner, I will have some steak & green beans. Sounds decent, yes?

I took over 600 pictures in Savannah that I need to go through so that might either have to wait til the weekend or try to get that done in chunks throughout the week, but here is a good one in the meantime, this picture represents 620 lbs lost in a year!:

Pretty darn cool!

Did I really wear those????

I had a bad day at work, so instead of eating a bag of Oreos (as if I could eat a bag of Oreos), I decided to take some pictures of myself. I feel mildly vain, but I feel good so, there ya go. Anyway, on to the show:

This is me in my most favorite pair of jeans that I can no longer wear (anyone from my support group will recognize them). I am also wearing my belt that I refuse to give up. I find that I punch holes about every 6 weeks or so. What's interesting about this belt is that I remember having to NOT wear it because it wasn't big enough. Heh...

This is me, sans belt. You can see just how big these freakin' jeans are now. These are the pair that I will wear when I'm at goal ... with about 2 or 3 friends in them.

This is the front view. I can probably fit a couple of my smaller nieces and nephews in there if I wanted to.

These photos make me happy as you can clearly see from my face. If I ever get ridiculous or bummed out about life, please, someone direct me to these photos.

Lab Rat

So, I got my labs done last week and got most of the results back. Unfortunately, I couldn't get them all covered by insurance so I'll have to pay for them myself. Anyway, there were some interesting numbers in the results. First, my cholesterol was a whopping 127. How crazy is that? HDL: 29, VLDL: 16, LDL: 82. Not too bad, I just need to increase my HDL and lower my LDL a tad. Time for fish oil I guess. When I was a hardcore low carber the lowest I ever got was 152. My blood sugar was 85, but then again, it was 84 when I had it last checked, go figure.

I weighed in at 380.2 lbs this morning. Woo-hoo! I've been losing fairly steady for about 10 days. We'll see if that continues.

Picture time! Here is a comparison picture of me over the months. The last picture is kinda bad - taken today with a lowly webcam:

Figured it out

I know now what's bugging about the progress photos I put together. I don't know who the girl on the left is. I absolutely do not connect that as being me. I just don't and that's a little disconcerting for a couple of reasons. The obvious one is, shit, how did I let myself get that big and two, I never saw myself as that big and therefore couldn't fathom looking like that. It's such a trip, but I am comfort myself in knowing that I'll never get that big again. NEVER. Today I weight 444 lbs. That's not a great thing to admit, embarassing even, but I tell you what. I won't be weighing that for long and when I say goodbye to 440 and hello to 439, I can tell you I won't be 440 ever again. Those steps and those realizations are the most important things to me. I used to be caught in wanting to fast forward 18 months from now when I'm hopefully through losing what I need to lose, but the journey is turning out to be an relevatory one, something I didn't think I'd relish. My best friend, food (especially sweet stuff), has found itself in a whole different capacity post-op so I am discovering that the DS did change me in more ways than one. The biggest change is that I am more aware of my feelings and am allowing them to just be instead of trying to numb them out. Forces me to figure out what is really going on.

Yes, indeed people, this is an interesting journey for me.