Make new friends, but keep the old...

one is silver, and the other gold! (can you hear me singing it?!?! I hope I sound better in your head than I do in real life)

One great thing about getting ready to have this surgery is that I'm meeting some really great new people. Tonight I met some girls from the OH board to plan some social events for the Richmond area. It was a lot of fun. I will admit to being overwhelmed - we were loud, and all talking at once about 15 different things. But I met some great new people, and I look forward to getting to know them better. When Theresa sends me the pictures, I'll post one :)

I met with the doctor today - I've been to the "the Center" 3 days in a row this week to meet with Lisa the nutritionist (Mon), Sgt. Bryan (Tue), and Dr. Powell (Wed). They've all been very encouraging and told me that I'm doing well. I know that I'm not doing as well as I could (or maybe even should!) be, but it's good to know that they are happy with the progress I'm making. I'm working hard at it, but there's always one more thing to do...I guess life is like that.

Speaking of, Sue (the "life coach" - the only one I didn't officially see this week, although we did chat when I ran into her in the office) thinks I should try hypnosis to see if I can get past gagging on nasty foods. Hmmmm.... She gave me the card of a hypnotist that she recommends. Still thinking on that one.

Alas, I broke the watch

Ok, I didn't BREAK the watch, but I did mess it up a little bit. It turns out that I did something that messed up the calorie counting (I have no idea what I did. Don't ask.) So I didn't ACTUALLY burn 1630 calories at Zumba. Oh, well. I enjoyed the thought while it lasted. I did work hard, though :) Off to Game Club!

Forgiveness follows failure

So it's Friday and I am STILL a bit sore from Tuesday's workout with Bryan. Wow. Maybe I need to learn not to work out until it stops hurting. But I have to work out at least 4 times between visits and if I wait two days to heal up then I absolutely have to do every day until then. See what I'm saying? I did a new water aerobics class yesterday - it was ok. Then, brilliant as I am, I decided that I was ready to try a class not in the water. So I went to Zumba tonight. There was some belly dancing, some salsa dancing, and a whole lot of shimmying and hip shaking. It was actually kind of fun, but it kicked my butt. Clearly, I'm not ready for that yet. My heart rate monitor is supposed to keep me in my "moderate" zone, but I spent the entire class well into the "high" zone tonight. Don't know how the sgt. is going to feel about that, but I didn't want to quit. And I didn't - I finished the class! And, on the "good news" front, I burned 1630 calories in just over an hour!

Today was the end of Teacher Appreciation Week (I have been very much appreciated all week - the parents have been wonderful) and my kids all brought in gifts today. The PTA sent out a survey waaaaay back (as in before "Boot Camp" started) asking us about our favorite things. So for my favorite morning drink, I put Diet Cherry Coke. Which it is. I love it. But I can't have it anymore. I got two 12-packs and a 20-oz bottle today. Also got a bunch of caramels, which I love but can't have. And mucho gift certificates to Bill's Barbeque, which I love but probably is not high in Nutripoints. But that's ok. They were really sweet to do it, and except for one caramel on the way home (ok, two caramels - but that was IT) I've been ok with resisting it so far. I'm giving away the coke and the candy and taking my friends out to Bill's - because it would be ok for me to eat there once. Just not $40 worth of times. :) I also got several nice gift certificates to other places, which will be fun to spend.

Sgt. Bryan strikes again!

OH. MY. GOODNESS. I worked out with Bryan yesterday and I am sooooooooo sore today. My abs, butt and thighs are mucho painful. I don't know if it's because I didn't go last week due to being sick, or just because of something extra we did. He said he almost made me do 3 sets of lunges. If we had done that, I don't know that I would have been able to walk today :)

Didn't do as good a job today with the Nutripoints system, but I'm determined that tomorrow will be a better day. It was still better than a day before I was on it, so that's something I suppose.

Nutripoints Day 1

So Nutripoints was not bad at all today - it was actually one of those days when I would have rather not eaten at all. Cooking is such a pain. No wonder I ate at drive-throughs so often. When you go all day and get home at 8, who wants to cook? But I took a sandwich, an OJ, and some broccoli for lunch today. The goal is to get in 6 servings of veggies, 4 of fruits, 3 of grains, 4 of legumes and/or meats, and 2 of milk/dairy in a day. I end up drinking most of my fruits and veggies which is fine. There is also a point assigned to each food - the higher the points, the better the food is for you (more nutrition per calorie). You are also supposed to hit a certain number of points per day, but right now my goal is to get in all the right servings, while eating only foods with a positive point value. Now potatoes in several forms - including frozen french fries - are on my approved veggie list, but I am trying to get no more than 2 of my veggie servings from potatoes. I know that my "points" are nowhere near where they're supposed to be because I'm mainly eating from the low end of the spectrum - I probably get 50 points a day where you're supposed to get 150. But it's a big change for me anyway. I'll keep working on it.

Tomorrow it's back to see Sgt. Bryan for my workout and meeting with Sue the Life Coach. I was so bad last week (although I legitimately was sick and missed my apt. with Bryan), I'm embarrassed to go back, but I will. It's not going to get any easier!

Happy Cuatro de Mayo!

I'm ready to give the Nutripoints system a try starting tomorrow. It really wouldn't be fair of me to criticize it so much without giving it a try. So hopefully I will start to see some positive results - and, after all, I am committed to some major lifestyle changes here.

I think I've realized the piece that's been missing in my WLS journey - God. How can I do this without him? That's big *duh* that's been smacking me in the face these past couple of days. So I'm really going to work on seeking His guidance and leaning on Him for making this work.

LSD thoughts

Well, I've been off the dreaded Liver Shrinking Diet for 3 days now, which is awesome! Getting ready to get started with the next phase of my nutrition plan - the Nutripoints system. I'm sooooo not psyched about this. It doesn't work well with what I like to eat (which I know is not healthy things, but still) and involves a lot of cooking, which I rarely do. I'm not happy with my nutritionist, because she doesn't seem terribly willing to be flexible and help me figure out a way to make it work for me. Her two comments were, "Maybe you're not ready for the surgery yet" and "Well, this is the program we do here so this is it". It's not a program that I can do post-op, so I'm feeling pretty negative about it and trying to get past that for right now.

But back to the ever-exciting LSD. Since it was a new idea to have patients do it this far out from surgery to "jump start weight loss and get them motivated", I've been collecting my thoughts. Not that anyone has asked. But I may share them anyway.

Positives:

• I lost 16 pounds in 2 weeks.
• I didn't die. Which is to say that I learned that I can live through it - and that, while I was cranky, I could have fun even when it wasn't centered around food.

Negatives:

• I was very cranky and irritable the entire two weeks, although not really hungry.
• It was inconvenient - I couldn't go out to eat with friends, had to be sure I had my special foods with me wherever I went.
• This far out from surgery I'm not sure I'm comfortable telling everyone, and it makes it hard not to. I didn't really want to just tell half-truths - "It's part of a new diet program I'm doing" or make up stores - "I'm not feeling well", but I did both some. I did end up telling some people that I wasn't ready to tell (co-workers).
• I didn't get to have my surgery at the end of it, and went a little wild food-wise the day after it was over.
• It was hard to be motivated to do it, since jump-starting my weight loss did not seem like a good enough reason to me to be put through this. It did not make me feel motivated. I can understand having to do it to shrink the liver for surgery, but this didn't make much sense to me which made it much more difficult.
• I felt like I was secretly being tested to see if I could do it.
• My nutritionist, who put me on the program, didn't have a complete understanding of what the diet was supposed to be, so for the first week I had to eat that nasty sandwich every night.

So, overall, despite the fact that my jeans are a little bit looser, this was a very negative, discouraging experience for me. And people telling me that other people had harder diets (I don't believe it for a minute - NO ONE else I have ever heard of has to do this for four weeks. And people who have to do all liquids usually only do it for a day or two) or that this was a good thing to get me prepared for surgery only made me more irritated. I'm having a really hard time with the whole thing right now and questioning everything. It's hard planning for something which is so far away. My surgeon's support group meets once a month and I've been to two already and will go to one more before my surgery. Then there's one the day after I have my surgery (I'll still be in the hospital, so won't go) It's hard seeing everyone else losing so much weight when I'm so far out and not really being able to relate to much of what they're saying. On my online message board I see people come in new and have their surgery quickly while I don't get to do that.

So, I'm sorry - I feel like a lot of my posts about this are negative. I've been trying to make all these changes - exercising 5 days a week, giving up diet soda, giving up FOOD for two weeks, now this Nutripoints thing - most of which have been very, very hard and I'm just not feeling better because of it. It's been about 6 weeks since I first started exercising and 4 since I gave up soda and I have yet to feel better. In fact, I feel worse. I'm very much an instant gratification junkie and this is hard. I'm going to try and post positive things next time :)