Today is ten months that I started my new life.  Ten months ago on September 22, 2009, I was in surgery at this time.  I was having  Roux-En-Y Gastric Bypass with Dr. David von Rueden as my surgeon.    The man is very talented.   I’ve had a wonderful ride. Easy recovery.  Fabulous results.  I could not be more pleased.

September 22, 2009 I woke up very early and got to the hospital early.  My darling husband who had his surgery just 5 weeks before me took me. Our friend Norman sat with him.  God bless Norman. He is ALWAYS there for us.  He sat with me the day of Brian’s surgery… Anyway… I’ve written about this before so I’m not going to rehash it.  I was in the hospital overnight and most of Wednesday with my dear friend Angie who had WLS with Dr. Andrew Averbach about 6 months before I had my surgery.    I was home by dinner time on the 23^rd.. the first few months are not strong in my memory any more.

What is strong for me now is that I LIVE MY LIFE!  Heck we went to a small county fair last night… Hubby and I split a pit ham sandwich. I ate mostly the meat from my half with a bit of the bread. I scarfed a few fries from girl child. I had about 2/3 of a small vanilla Ice milk cone… threw the cone away.  I ate TWO BITES of girl child’s fried dough…   And I’m LIVING.  Even with a cranky pouch that can eat very little (which I’m actually rather pleased with… I pray this small pouch continues forever and ever amen…) protein or veggies I can manage some serious carbs, nuts or fruit as needed…. But I never feel deprived.  Or that I’m missing anything.  But of course I don’t drink alcohol and don’t miss it. And I never was a soda drinker…

So where do I stand.   At my heaviest weight ever known at home I weighed 286.   That’s 121.4 pounds MORE than I weigh now.  That’s more than some people weigh. I’ve lost a person.   This morning I weighed 164.6; that is a New LOW weight for me since I was about 30 or so.  I actually can’t recall the last time I weighed that.    It means I have to lose about 14 more pounds.  FOURTEEN…. How freaking Normal is that.  I weighed 253 the morning of surgery so I have lost 88.4 pounds.   IN TEN MONTHS.  Never have I done that without surgery.  It took me  2 years with SOUTH BEACH DIET  to go from 286 to 206…. And I struggled.  I even exercised some.   I never loved exercise. I never felt healthy.  I never felt like I could be at goal at 206.  I feel like I could be at goal at 165.  I do. AND I found out I do like to exercise… and walk and lift weights and DO YOGA…

Would I have this surgery again. YOU BET.  Am I worried about regain?  YOU BET.   So would I have had DS?  Naw I don’t think so.  I LIKE the options with RNY.  THE ONLY THING I MISS is my NSAIDS.  I Like that I MIGHT DUMP (and it’s really so damn random with me that I never know if I will or not but I risk it. I had ice milk last night…  I like that I can’t eat and drink at the same time.  It keeps my snacking down to a minimum.  I like my tiny pouch.  Yes, I know it will grow over time.  But at 10 months out its still TEENY TINY and that’s a good thing.

Tags: DS, NSAIDS, SOUTH BEACH DIET, surgiversary, WLS, yoga

This is a very very long post… I will break it down into  parts.

This is PART ONE

Background

How about NONE of the above?

I am getting SICK and TIRED of the ARROGANT and IGNORANT people who think that Weight Loss Surgery is ANY of the above.

First of all let’s address the two aspects of MY type of WLS.

I had Roux-en-y Gastric Bypass (RNY).  The Roux-en-Y gastric bypass procedure involves creating a stomach pouch out of a small portion of the stomach and attaching it directly to the small intestine, bypassing a large part of the stomach and duodenum. Not only is the stomach pouch too small to hold large amounts of food, but by skipping the duodenum, fat absorption is substantially reduced. In addition, the amounts of food we can eat are greatly reduced.  I used to eat and eat and eat.  An unaltered stomach can (and does) hold up to SIXTEEN CUPS of food.  My pouch now holds probably 6-8 oz or so.  Eventually it will grow to hold 8-12 oz.  Much better than 16 cups don’t you think???

In addition I have some rules that have to be followed.  At this point there are two food rules that I live and die by:

1.   PROTEIN FIRST.  I strive for 100g of protein a day but I tend to be ok with a range of 80-120.   My doctor would be happy with 60-80 but I work out pretty hard for his standard patient and I’ve been well educated by the likes of Andrea, Nikki  and Melting Mama so I tend to be more aggressive with things like protein and supplements (vitamins and such)

2.  NEVER EAT and DRINK at the same time.  AND wait at least 30 minutes after eating before drinking.   I do drink up until the time I put food in my mouth but once I eat I stop drinking.  I will never ever break this rule on purpose (I’ve done  it by mistake but not on purpose)

There are also rules about sugar and fat but I tend to bend those a bit..

So what does this mean for me?  It means is, I can eat very little food at this point. Eventually I should be able to eat what is considered A NORMAL amount of food.  The problem with this is that what OUR society (vs. what is medically necessary) considers a normal amount of food is EXCESSIVE to the extreme at this point.

I wish sometimes that I could eat more. But  I can’t.  And what the surgery has taught me in the extreme is that YES I can survive and THRIVE on the amount of food I am ingesting daily.  I thrive, I work out, I live. I enjoy.   It’s a good life. I have NO deprivation of any kind.  Thankfully I am not in any way shape or form suffering from side effects or problems.  I have friends that struggle so to stay healthy that my delight in how easy this feels (and yes right NOW it does feel easy) sometimes become guilt.

I had this surgery nearly ten months ago on September 22, 2009.  It was my rebirth in many ways.  I thought about having lap band but I like the malabsorption part of the RNY, even if it does not last forever. (Well to be honest the malabsorption of the nutrients does but the caloric malabsorption goes away sadly) I like that my pouch is tiny.  It still is tiny by the way. I was thinking at 10 months out I should be eating much more normal amounts and sometimes I can.  Most times however, I eat ¼ of a serving of something (half of a half) and call it a day. In fact, I went to lunch today with Leslie, Sylvie, Angie and Brian showed up.  Between the FIVE of us, we ordered TWO quesadillas.  We all had leftovers.  I had about 3 tortilla chips with salsa and TWO small wedges of steak quesadilla.  Oh and a couple of spoonfuls of rice and refried beans… YUMMY.  AND DONE.   AND then, (but wait there’s more) Angie Bri and I hit STARBUCKS for large (venti) iced decaf coffees.  That’s gone now too… I will have a snack later.. I will enjoy a dinner and a snack and more iced decaf…. And somehow today I will manage to get in about 1500 calories, 100g of protein, 150g of carbs and 60g of fat or so… and yet… I still continue to lose weight.  Maybe that’s the part that’s EASY.  The fact that I’m living and doing it well and I’m happy?

Is life supposed to be hard?  I don’t think so.   So let’s talk about these ideas of  CHEATING, MAGIC or EASY….

Tags: Cheating, Easy, Magic, ranting, WLS

NOT a baby… no no no…  Today is my NINE MONTH SURGIVERSAY… yep 9 months ago today I was in surgery.  It’s amazing how fast it goes.   This is an idea of my day now:

ok here’s the daily report:

scale: 172.4 this is:

down 1.6 from yesterday
up .8 from last tuesday
down 5 pounds from a month ago ( my surgical monthly report shows that I’m LOW average this month)
down .6 for the entire MONTH of JUNE

down 80.4 from surgery date which is just under 9 pounds per month… ugh.  I wish it was more.

oh and I’m down 113.4 from the heaviest on my home scale.  wow that’s almost a whole person.

basically the TREND is good… and isn’t that what matters?

fashion: blue crop pants with the blue flowered top, diamond drop earrings (hair is up today so that’s an important point) white sandals. going to be mid 90s today… we are going to hit 100 on Thursday it appears…

exercise: after work… will ATTEMPT the first C25K podcast today IF the ankle settles down. it has been going out the last two days. the chip is moving and it hurts to dorsi-flex (toes to shin) the joint and sometimes when I step it locks which HURTS badly… when the chip is stationary the ankle is JUST fine… I don’t know if it’s PMS related or weather related or just random but I do know it’s a pain… the knees (thank FSM) are just fine today…. I will also do some weight work and my stretching today

food:

commute: click/milk/protein/coffee  (this is the daily breakfast 99.9% of the time)
snack: yogurt
lunch: cottage cheese w/cucumber and tomato pita puffs (salty little puffs of air with minimal nutritional value)
snack: cheese and banana (pre-workout)
dinner: something cool…. it’s HOT….
LNS: fudge pop probably

this is a pretty typical day for me.

of course I wake up around 5 am (and loll in bed about 15 minutes with dogs and hubby)

i get up

I potty  (and hope that the colace, magnesium oxide and benefiber of the day before worked)

I brush my teeth

I get on the scale NAKED…. while I may weigh more than ONCE I only count the first weigh.  I would say 99% of the time.  Occasionally it’s way to whacked out (too low or too high) to be accurate….so I reweigh to find something closer to the day before.

today is not a gym MORNING (it is however a gym DAY) so I shower and dress for the office and take the gym bag with the gear with me for after work.   In fact,  almost EVERY day is a gym day now…  who would have ever thought I would love going to the gym.  I wish my knees and ankle were happier with me about it… and I wish my butt/back/piraformis did not hurt so much… but I wonder how bad it would be if I didn’t go to the gym almost daily.

Yes I am in the gym pretty much everyday.  I usually skip either Saturday or Sunday (usually Sunday) but this past week I skipped Saturday.  AND if I don’t have plans and bri is racing I might go both days anyway.  I am thinking of trying the Couch to 5k but I worry that I’m doing too much with my ankle and bad knees… Yes KNEES… the left knee has a torn meniscus and a misplaced Baker’s Cyst… the right knee.. arthritis.   so not cool… so not happy about this.  oh and my ankle is acting up again…

It does not stop me from hitting the gym. I love Yoga. I love the stretch, I like to lift, I even like to run but my body takes a pounding….

Food is a bit more complicated.  I eat more fat and carbs and calories than you would think I should but less than the gowear fit thinks i should.   Maybe that’s why I’m stalled this month.

Yes I lost 5 pounds during the surgical month of 5/22-6/22 but I’ve lost NOTHING for the month of June. and that makes me sad and frustrated.  It’s not abnormal.  It could be from eating too many carbs, it could be from not eating enough food.  it could be from not drinking enough water, it could be from many things or nothing at all.. who knows.

all i can do is keep moving forward… can’t believe it’s been 9 months now… wow.

Tags: Exercise, gym, surgiversary, WLS

Today is April 22, 2010, 7 months ago at this time I was in surgery.  I had Gastric Bypass at St. Agnes Hospital with Dr. David Von Rueden on September 22, 2009, just 5 short weeks after my darling husband Brian had it.   At the time it seemed like a good idea.  Now I’m not so sure.

This has been a rough week for Brian.  He is in a LONG LONG STALL and he feels like a WLS failure.  He is not.  He is down nearly 35% of his body weight in 8 months… this is a good thing. He has gone from over 475 pounds to under 315… this is TREMENDOUS… the problem is, he’s still over 300 pounds and I’m not…   While he is VERY compliant about his food and drink, he’s not so compliant about his exercise.  And he knows it.  And we are working on it.   I wish this WAS magic.  It’s not.  It’s HARD work.  Trust me on this….  I work HARD to get as far as I get… and It is slow…  Let’s look at this:

The morning of surgery I weighed 253 on my scale.  (Or was it 256 I can’t remember)… let’s say 253 because I don’t want more credit than I deserve. This morning I weighed 184.4.  How casually I can say that now… but OMG I never thought I’d see the 180s again.

Let’s look at my weight loss monthly since surgery:

Date                              Weight              Monthly Loss      Total Loss      # of months

9/22/2009                 253                        0                                  0                           0

10/22/2009               236.4                     16.6                             16.6                      1

11/22/2009               225                        11.4                             28                         2

12/22/2009               214.2                     10.8                             38.8                      3

01/22/2010               204.8                     9.4                               48.2                      4

2/22/2010                  197.6                    7.2                               55.4                      5

3/22/2010                  191.8                    5.8                               61.2                      6

4/22/2010                  184.4                    7.4                               68.6                     7

The red text indicate months I lost less than average

The orange text indicate months I lost AVERAGE amounts

The  green text the months I lost MORE than average.  Of couse once you get past month six it’s a free for all… so there really is no average… I guess I’m all green now….

So what is AVERAGE?

According to my friend Pam T.

Month 1:                                                       20ish pounds lost

Months 2-6:                                               7-10 pounds per month lost

Month 6 and beyond:                           5-7 pounds or whatever your body feels like doing

So the average at 7 months out is anywhere from 60-77 pounds.  I’m right in there at 68.6 pounds… just under ten pounds per month… but still over 2 pounds per week… ya gotta look at the averages…2 weeks ago I lost NOTHING for the week.  NOTHING… not one ounce.  The week before I lost 3 the week following 3.2  so over a 3 week period I lost over 6 pounds…   Heck I weigh daily and if I did not look at monthly and weekly averages I’d be NUTS.  Because weight loss is not linear, comparable or predictable…

So what is a typical day like?   I think that’s often the question newbies to WLS have…

Weekdays:

Alarm goes off  at 4:55  of course somewhere around 4:30 we all stirred.  I adjusted the tv for the news. the dogs rearranged themselves, hubby went potty… (interestingly enough I do not get enough fluids to make me get up and go potty at night any more…) we then nap till the alarm goes off.  Lazy mornings mean we aren’t bolting out of bed till 5:20…  If it’s MONDAY, WEDNESDAY or FRIDAY, I’m packing work clothes in my gym bag, breakfast, lunch and snacks in my lunch tote grabbing a shower and heading over to the gym.  If it’s THURSDAY I pack gym gear in the gym bag, and head to work because I train with Tammie on Thursday afternoons.

Personally I much prefer Yoga Mornings and wish EVERY morning could be a yoga class morning… Yes I know I could do yoga at home alone… but the dynamic of the class helps.  I plan to record the classes on my itouch along with recording my training sessions with Tammie she can state the name of the machine and the weights and reps for me.. It will be a big help when I’m on my own.  And yes after this set of workout sessions I will be on my own… makes me sad and scared but what else can I do.. it’s very expensive to work with her.  WORTH every penny but still….and I can’t depend on her forever, eventually I have to be on my own and take care of myself…

As usual, I digress…  ah the joys of an ADHD brain.  I think blogs were invented for us…  we ramble along in our own little worlds ya know…  But I do love yoga.  Especially now that I can move… and breathe and it feels better to do it than to not do it.  Yoga has become one of my transfer addictions… seriously.  I love it.  I need it.  For several reasons.

1. it makes me feel better emotionally to have accomplished something

2. it makes me feel better physically and it’s helping to keep me flexible and limber

3. it’s a nice start to my day.

But back to my day….

Every morning I make a protein drink to have in the car on the way to work (I drink some on the way to the gym on gym mornings)

8 oz milk

2 tsp benefiber

1 scoop Click (vanilla or mocha)

1 scoop Designer Whey Vanilla Praline Protein Powder

2 squirts of sf syrup (praline or vanilla usually)

shake this well in my CLICK shaker  and pour into my travel mug that has already been filled with an espresso shot of coffee.

nuke for 45 seconds.

I start EVERY morning with this drink

it’s got about 32 grams of protein and it holds me all morning.   Of course I’m not a big eater yet…  most days.  I do have my moments.

Anyway I have to remind myself to eat and drink… I swear I could go all day with nothing.

I have alarms set to remind me to take my vitamins…

Food that is good for me is not interesting.  I’d rather not eat.

Food that I miss (ice cream, bagels, cakes, cookies etc) scare me and I don’t touch them….

EATING is a chore.   Truly.   it is NOT the pleasure it once was and I am sure will be again…

I don’t think I get enough veggies. I don’t get a lot of fruit…

Protein I’m good with cause of all the protein drinks…

Clothes…

clothes are interesting.  I never thought I’d struggle with body image but I do.  I do not see myself as thin. I have to take a trusted friend with me shopping or else i don’t do well… I buy shirts too big… LOL how funny to me that I am struggling with this….  I was in size 26 at my heaviest.  my 24s were tight the morning of surgery…  now i’m in 14s pretty much… some 16s.  I keep saying I’m in 18s but the 18 jeans were pulled down last night without unbuttoning them… I think 16s are the biggest I can go now…

And shirts… depends on the cut  large or XL  but NOT  3x or even 4x.  And yet I still gravitate towards the big girl sizes…

Bras… were 48DDD now I think 42DD or even 40DD not sure… have to be fitted.. oh joy…

So here I am at 7 months out… losing weight, feeling great loving life,

are there any down sides?

yep… food struggles… emotional upheavals….body image issues,  SKIN… oy I’m starting to try to figure out how much of me is fat and how much is skin….  I’m starting to think there is way more skin than I thought… because although I’m still a solid 184 pounds,  I don’t think I have much more than 30 more pounds to lose… and I have no idea where I am going to tuck all this skin….  I guess I better start saving for plastic surgery….

Tags: averages, brian, clothes, failure, gym, shopping, surgiversary, trainer, weigth loss, WLS, yoga

I posted this on OH today… I want to share it here too…

Yep here’s a geek girl post for ya…  (PREOPS and NEWLY POST OPS PAY ATTENTION)

I keep telling myself I’m losing SLOWLY…  I’m not.
I keep telling myself I’m a failure  I’m NOT
I keep thinking that I’m doing something wrong.. I’m NOT.

NOW Granted I’m technically a light weight…   my EW according to the doctor was 143 and I’m at 62% EWL already.  THIS IS GOOD…  I chart every day.  I chart monthly on the calendar month I chart monthly on the surgical month…  I took all this info and created a weekly chart… it was the first time I felt like I was doing something RIGHT…..

I had ONE week where I had a small gain  (.8  so less than a pound)  and some weeks I lose a lot more than that or a lot less…..   but I AVERAGE  2.3 pounds lost PER WEEK.  this is HUGE folks…   I’ve never lost that CONSISTENTLY over a long period of time…

I keep thinking I’m stalling… but there is LOSS of some amount EVERY week even if it’s .2 pounds…

Sometimes I think that my expectations of what I would lose were unrealistic.   I think we really have to look at percentages not actual pounds.    62% of my EWL is huge… HUGE…    It’s like 88 pounds…  my ticker is from the day of surgery on my scale.  not my preop weight on their scale… so my ticker does NOT match the doctor’s expectations…

here’s the chart…    and take heed…  slow and steady wins this race…

DATE                Week           Weight        Loss           Total loss

Tags: Diet, surgery, WLS

Still have rumblings of discontent.  So hard to be permanently perfectly happy in life.   Gray overcast and rainy today.   I’m hoping I can update the blog daily but I know as i get healthier and busier that the web will have to fall by the wayside.

Starting to really get into walking on the link with Lew  (HI LEW).  One of my better buddies at work!  Yesterday we did 4 laps (I count it as a mile) and then we did 8 laps later in the day (that’s 2 miles)  I guess I’ll need to add one extra lap with the second walk to make it a full 3 miles…  hopefully eventually I can do 8 laps in the morning and 9 laps in the afternoon and have 4 miles per day.  Makes me think at least for a while I can give up the gym.  Save some money.  I think my contract is over for now.   Even is we give it up 6 months that’s 600 dollars.. big savings.

Today Brian and I visit the Pulmonary Doctor as a step towards being approved for WLS.  A tad nervous but not really.  Just a bit stressed as Brian gets stressed and that stresses me.

I have to leave work at 9 and have no idea when i’ll be back but i guess I’m working till 6 tonite to make up for it.

HUGE:  we are NOT having Chicken for dinner.   LOL.   nope  just beef.  I’m thinking  beef, rice, cheese beans and salsa in a casserole.    Something like this but no tortilla topping just the casserole part:

I am always amazed when folks think I’m a good cook.  I’m not.  not really.

oh well, maybe more later….

Tags: doctor, Dogs, Friends, walk, WLS