3 month follow-up

I also went for my 3 month follow-up appointment today. I had lost 17 pounds since my last appointment a month ago, bringing my total lost to 81 pounds. I, as usual, was frustrated with that but my dr. was pleased. He said that starting month 3 (which this past one was for me), bypass patients should lose 15-20 pounds a month. This is not fast enough to satisfy me! Of course, I think I'm starting to feel about losing weight the way that one of the Rockefellers did about money. Someone asked him once how much money was enough and he answered (quite cleverly, I thought), "Just a little bit more" So I need to watch that I don't drive myself crazy over this. I have a family reunion at the beginning of November though, and I really want to have lost 100 pounds by then. It's 6 weeks away so that's a fairly realistic goal, but I'm definitely going to have to work on it. Although to be honest with you, most of my family there probably won't even notice I've lost weight. A lot of them are 2nd cousins and such and at the last family reunion I was actually at my lowest weight with Weight Watchers, and I should be right around that weight again. Which means, yes, in the last 5 years I have gained and lost 100 pounds. How scary is that? (well, not quite yet but you see what I'm getting at)

So I took my food journal in to show my dr., even though I really didn't want to. I know that I haven't been making the best food choices and I'm frustrated with myself about it. I exercise, I get in my water, I take my supplements, I eat appropriate portions - I'm just not choosing the best foods. Which was my problem pre-op, too. He acknowledged that but was much nicer than I thought I had a right to expect. He focused a lot on the weight that I've lost and the things that are going well and said, "Well, you can't argue with the weight loss" Not that he let me slide on it - he talked about what I should be doing and tomorrow I see the nut and have to really face the music there. She's very nice, too. I don't know why it is that I have so much trouble with this. It seems so easy when we talk about it, but then I drag myself through another day and it's all I can do to get off the couch and eat anything at all. I know all the good things to do - cook ahead, plan meals, only keep healthy things in the house, even just forcing myself to cook something and it's never as big a deal as I make it out to be. I guess I'm just a crazy whack job. But I have come a long way. The choices I'm making now, while not great, are way better than what I was making last year at this time. So I just have to keep working at it. Like Dr. E. said today, I need to develop good habits now b/c in 5 years the surgery won't be helping me so much and it will be up to me to keep the weight off. I know I talk about this a lot - and at length.

Tonight I went and took a Zumba class at the gym! I did this once way back in the spring when I had to wear my heart monitor. I remember that I had such a hard time getting my heart rate down where it was supposed to be - the class kicked my butt. Tonight I definitely worked, but I didn't die! If you're not familiar with Zumba, then clearly you've been living under a rock. The Zumba craze kind of reminds me of the Tae-Bo craze 10 years ago. (I bought into that one, too - I had the tapes! Go Billy Blanks!) It's like a dance class with salsa, belly dancing, Latin moves, stuff like that. It's really loud and high energy and fun - and a lot of work. My class tonight had probably 50-75 people crammed into it. That's a lot of people to hide behind, and trust me - there will be someone there less coordinated than you. There was a man in his 50s in our class tonight! But you can't really be shy and do Zumba - and it would probably be better if you had some dance experience. Or some rhythm. So, if you were not me. But as much as I stress about it, no one is there to watch me. I know you find that hard to believe, but I've come to learn it's true. I'll probably go back. Anybody want to Zumba with me? (If you get the chance to take a class with Angela at American Family West End, I highly recommend her)

Losing Hair

My hair is starting to fall out. I was expecting it and terrified of it. But, come to find out - it's not such a big deal. Really. I always heard about it as a side effect of WLS, but people never really seemed too upset about it and I couldn't figure it out. Because it seemed like a big deal to me. But, it's not like I'm going bald or anything. It will just thin out a little bit. Right now, it's not coming out in huge clumps but that may change. Then again, it may not. With all of the changes that I have to put up with as a post-op, this one is actually pretty easy to live with.

Tired and Whiny

A kid at school asked me if I was pregnant today. Awesome.

I'm having a really hard time getting my head around this whole new-way-of-eating thing. Which is frustrating to me b/c I spent a lot of time getting ready for it and knew what I was getting into. Fully. But I get so irritated that I have to think so much about what I have to eat, and I never feel like eating when I should, or then I get really hungry but I don't feel like fixing anything so I just mope around and get grumpier. Then I get frustrated and start chastising myself, which makes me defensive (with myself, naturally, because this is a normal thing) and even more irritable and want to do/eat something I'm not supposed to just to prove that "I can". To myself. (picture Napoleon Dynamite saying "idiot!" here)

To top it off, I'm just not feeling good. Not sick - nothing that I should actually complain about. Just tired, with frequent feelings of nausea and light-headedness. Plus the whole grumpier-than-Oscar-the-Grouch thing. Maybe I'm PMSing. That would actually be great, because then I would have a reason and know it will be over soon.

To be fair, I had a lot of these same feelings about eating before surgery. But then I would just order a pizza or go to McDonalds to resolve it, and those are not viable options now. Which is good, because that's why I ended up in this position in the first place. But I need to find another way to resolve it. And it has to be one that makes me happy when I'm this irritable, and that's no easy task. As anyone who knows me well knows, once I get into a grumpy-funk pretty much everything just makes it worse. A lot of times, honestly, I just have to take a nap and sleep it off.

Be glad you can't see me right now...

I'm really sweaty and gross. Really gross. I took a picture to show you, then vetoed it as un-bloggable.

I always think that's a great way to start off a post, don't you? More people should do that. Maybe I should lead a blog school.

Anyway, I just got back from using the trail around my apt. complex. And I'm proud to say that I did a jog/walk combo for most of it. I'm not going to say I jogged half of it, but I did do a significant portion which is fairly amazing for me. I literally used to run like 3 steps and feel like I was going to die. If you have never been really fat, you may think that is an exaggeration, but it isn't. I did about 3 miles in 40 minutes, which for those of you keeping track (i.e., me) is an average of about 4.5 miles an hour. When I started out, I was doing about 3 mph. So that's exciting. And encouraging for me because I'm going through a "I can't see the weight loss" phase right now that's pretty discouraging. But I am definitely seeing an improvement in my exercising, which is good motivation for me to keep doing it.

I've been hungry today, which is strange. It's hard for me to know if it's real hunger or just a habit of being hungry in the afternoon after school. Sometimes I don't feel like I eat enough - it almost seems like the weight comes off better when I eat a little more. But most of the time I feel like I eat as much as an average person does. I probably don't, but it seems like it. There was a girl at my school last year who had this surgery (she's not there anymore), and everyone keeps explaining to me how little she ate. Which makes me feel like they think I'm eating more than that and I shouldn't be. Whatever. I'm working on keeping a food journal to take to the doc and the nut this month, so we'll see what they have to say.

Little updates :)

It just occurred to me the other day - when I read other WLS patient's blogs, I always want to know how much weight they're losing. Yet I never post mine. I don't know why. Maybe b/c I already know so I'm not curious :) Anyway, it's not a secret so I thought I'd share. To date, since I started pre-op "boot camp" back in March, I've lost about 75 pounds. It hasn't come off evenly, though. The stats:

• Pre-op (3 1/2 months): 27 pounds
• 1st 2 weeks after surgery: 20 pounds
  
• Next 6 weeks: 17 pounds (yes, this was a very frustrating 6 weeks)
• Last 2 weeks: 11 pounds

I think that comes out close to 75. I'm thinking the goal is to average around 5 lb/week. Everyone has different ideas, though.

This was an exciting WLS-related story: I have these pants that I love. They're from Lands End, just elastic-waist, loose, cotton pants. When I'm at home I practically live in them, and I wear them to sleep in a lot (I have two pairs). I've noticed just in the last week or so that they're really getting too big to wear. This morning they literally fell off of me as I was walking from the bathroom to my bedroom. Just fell off. As excited as I am about the lost weight, I'll be a little sad to lose my favorite pants...

Champion of the Games

I did something new and exciting for me - when I hit the gym, I ran on the treadmill. Ok, it was more like a jog. You know that speed where you can't quite walk that fast but you can't quite run that slow? That's where I was. And I only did it in 1-minute bursts (jog a minute, walk a minute for 5 minutes - then spend 5 minutes walking on an incline and repeat. But even my walking was faster than I usually do) The best part was I didn't even think I was going to die! Rock on.
This is how I picture myself on the treadmill:

This is what I really look like:

Oh, well. Dare to dream, right?