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Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Look how messy my bathroom is!

I wrote about my little tee-shirts the other day.  Here I am in my spaghetti-strap tee shirt that I wear under tight fitting shirts:





And here I am with my shirt over the tee, looking practically lump free!

Thank you for not judging me based on how messy my bathroom counter is!

Today was weigh-day and I hit a new low! 167.2 lbs. (75.8 kg.).  That is just .4 lbs. (.18 kg.) from my last lowest low, but 2.2 lbs. (1 kg.) from my weigh-in last week when I was up a bit.  So yeah!

I've been tracking my food using My Fitness Pal after several of you recommended it.  I think I am resigned to having to track my food for the rest of my life or risk re-gaining.  Even though I feel like I am staying on-track when I don't write things down, I always seem to experience trouble at the scale so I guess I'm a tracker.  Oddly I didn't have to write things down most of the time I was losing.  This is more of a maintenance thing for me.  My Fitness Pal is kind of fun to use so I am okay with it for now.

I was thinking this morning about things I can no longer do since being banded.  I can't usually sleep on my left side without hearing a bunch of gurgling.  If I burp, the gurgling stops for awhile, but it comes back.  I don't like to sleep on my back so I pretty much have to sleep on my right side.  Annoying, but better than weighing 280 lbs. (127 kg.).

So how about you?  Is there anything you can no longer do?  Foods you can't eat?



Monday, May 23, 2011

Little tee shirt = little miracle

That's not me

If you are like me, you probably have some extra skin around the middle that doesn't always lay right.  And now that they use that flimsy fabric in shirts, the chance of muffin top showing through is pretty high.  Enter the tiny spaghetti strap tee shirt.

I bough a pack at Costco and often wear a tee-shirt under my regular shirt to eliminate the extra bumps.  It is a miracle how much difference an extra layer of cotton between my jeans and shirt can make!

Happy Monday!    

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Random Thursday

The weather is beautiful today.  I wish I wasn't stuck in my office.  My co-worker is taking a half-day so she just left.  I'm watching her leave and feeling jealous!  I feel like whimpering like a puppy.  I.DON'T.WANT.TO.BE.HERE.

I signed up for My Fitness Pal and I am liking it so far.  I used to use My-Calorie-Counter and it is pretty similar.  It gives me so many extra calories when I enter my exercise.  I don't plan on using them.  Today it says I should be eating over 2,000 calories.  Holy CRAP!!!  I never eat that much.  Just the thought scares me!

The scale hates me.  I got on today just to torture myself and I was up even more than yesterday which is complete BOLLOCKS!  There must be some water weight BS going on or something.  I'm going to ignore it.  I am eating just fine, thank you very much.

Thank you all for you support about my thieving daughter.  I appreciate your ideas and suggestions and confirmation that we're doing the right thing.  I know she's a good kid and I know she'll get over it.  Honestly I never imagined how difficult parenting would be before I had kids.  And it never occurred to me that I wouldn't know what to do so often.  I do what I think is best, but I still see my kids making mistakes and suffering at times.  I guess every parent comes to that realization.

Did I ever tell you about my friend and her two SUPER-KIDS?  She has one daughter who is a soccer and basketball star.  She plays both sports year-round and practices or has games (often multiple games) nearly every day.  Their teams always win and they play up - compete against older children.  The child is 9 and she is very smart and sweet, but I just can't help feeling sorry for how much pressure she's under.  Their other child, an 11-year-old boy, isn't much of an athlete so they have steered him toward his interests which are drama and music.  He plays piano and sings and just starred in a children's production of the Wizard of Oz.  I love my friend very much.  She and her husband are great people.  I think I am jealous of how talented their kids are.  My kids are just ordinary.  My daughter also plays soccer, but her team loses sometimes.  They've never been profiled on the local news.  My friend also just got a new job working 1/2 time and she is earning almost as much as she was at her full-time job that she just quit.  Working 1/2 time is my DREAM!  I am happy for her, but I can't help wish that my own situation was different.  And a tiny little bit of me wishes the daughter's soccer team would lose a game.  Is that wrong? Is it less-wrong if I tell you that they have two kids that used to be on my daughter's team?   

I think I need a fill, but I probably won't get one any time soon.  I don't have the money for one thing.  For another I have decent restriction, but I am preoccupied with food.  Is getting a fill a valid treatment for food preoccupation?  I seldom thought about food before my un-fill a few months back.  I'm also worried about the acid reflux coming back.  

So I guess that's about it.  I hope it is sunny where you're at.  And I hope you can get out to enjoy it!

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

CURED!!!

Do you ever just get tired of thinking about what you eat and what you weigh?  I am really saick of it.  It is so bad that I haven't even really been blogging, posting or reading.  Won't there come a time when I can just announce that I'm cured and put it all behind me forever?

I haven't been tracking my food, but I think I should start again.  I feel like I've been eating okay, but I didn't like my weigh in this morning so I guess I need to do something.  Maybe I'll try a free on-line tracker.  Does anyone have one they suggest?

The rest of my life has been...not fantastic.  I have a lot of stressful things hitting me from every side.  I don't want to bore you with all that, but I will mention one specific thing because I need some advice.  My oldest daughter has had a history of stealing.  She hasn't had any real issues for about a year, but her dad and I caught her last night with something in her bag that she had taken from my office.  She first tried to lie and say a kid at school gave it to her.  We knew she was lying, but she insisted so we told her we would be talking to her teacher and the child she fingered would be questioned.  She went upstairs and returned a few minutes later to say she was lying and that she'd actually stolen the thing from my office.  We appreciated her honesty.

In the past when she stole, we had her write letters of apology and she was grounded.  The last time she had to perform five hours of chores during which time she was grounded and write an essay on why stealing is wrong.  It has been a year since she's stolen so I guess we felt that the problem was solved.  This time she's been grounded for the time it takes her to complete 10 hours of chores, she has to write a letter of apology and she has to donate a bag of her things to the Goodwill.  What do you guys think?  Does this seem appropriate?  Does anyone have any ideas about teaching kids not to steal.  My daughter is 10 years old.

Both her dad and I stole when we were her age and my sister's kids have been caught stealing.  I know it isn't unusual, but obviously we want it to stop.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

I don't want to write it down

All of the sudden I don't feel like writing down my food.  And I haven't done it in a week or so.  I'm not sure if I should be concerned by my reluctance or if I should just accept it as a logical step. 

I didn't write down my food most of the time I was actively losing weight.  During the first couple months post-op, I kept track and then at the first of this year I started again because I had stopped losing. 

I could either be lulling myself into a situation where I'll be eating too much or I could just be tired of keeping track and ready to spread my wings a bit.

What do you guys think?  Do you write down your food?  When do you think people should stop?

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

No Hangover

A few of you hoped I didn't have a horrible hangover after my Monday night of debauchery.  I'm sure you'll be interested to know that I've NEVER had a hangover.  Ever.  Not once.  I've woken up drunk the next morning (not recently), but I've never been hungover.  Weird, huh?
Today is my weigh-day and I am happy to report a loss of 1.4 lbs. (.6 kg.).  This brings me to a total loss of 112.4 lbs. (51 kg.).  I now weigh 167.6 lbs. (76 kg.).  This is the biggest loss I've had in one week in a good, long time!  My BMI is now 25.5 so I am still technically overweight for another 4.6 lbs. (2 kg.).  I don't know if I'll ever get there, but I feel fine with where I'm at.

I've been thinking about perfectionism lately.  I posted a comment on someone's blog yesterday and I realized that the things I was saying were things that related to perfectionism that sort of jived (jove?) with some of the things I've been trying to write about.  I think the concept of perfectionism (or lack thereof) really explains where I'm at these days. 

I used to be a perfectionist.  I grew up in a loving, but very rigid household.  When I was on my own in my teens and early 20's, I struggled with bulimia and feeling out of control much of the time.  I had a very demanding job and my boss was a difficult man to work for.  My coping mechanism was to attempt to follow a very rigid set of rules about food, appearance, exercise, work and pretty much everything else.  When I deviated from these rules, I was "bad" and I punished myself in various ways.  If it was food related, like I ate something I shouldn't eat, I would purge or starve or compulsively exercise.  I was thin (118 lbs. (53.5 kg.) was my lowest low), but I was seldom happy.  I couldn't meet my standards most of the time.  My life was also very small.  I didn't date much and I lived alone with my pets.  I had some friends, but my relationships were very one-sided.  I didn't let people get close to me so I had relationships with people who needed a lot of my attention, but there wasn't really anything left for me. 

As I grew older I changed a great deal.  Life became bigger.  I met my husband and we got married pretty quickly.  We lived in Mexico for a while and I made new friends there.  I was still very reserved, but the bigger my life became, the more I realized how little control I really had of things.  I hadn't engaged in bulimic behaviors for many years except the occasional binge.  I weighed more, but I was a normal weight.  I quit that job for the jackass boss which was one of the best things I'd ever done.  And then I got pregnant.

Pregnancy and having a child opens your life like few things can.  Just the process of being pregnant and giving birth puts a person into situations a reserved, control-freak like me would never otherwise have been in.  Strangers see and know intimate details about your body.  It is very obtrusive.  But I didn't count on the fear.  I worried and fretted about this new little creature I carried and birthed in ways you cannot imagine.  I feared she would die in her sleep and if I thought about her, I would have to get up and check on her because I knew that if the worst ever happened, I'd never forgive myself if I had worried about her and NOT checked on her.  But over time I learned to relax a bit.  I started letting all those rigid rules loosen up.  Because I realized that we're never 100% safe and in control.  Nothing we can do will guarantee that we won't suffer and experience pain in this life.  In fact I think we are pretty-much guaranteed that we will.

My world got even bigger.  I had another daughter.  People I loved died.  I went back to college.  I worked.  I was active in church and relationships.  Perfectionism and control became farther and farther from my day-to-day reality.  Sure, I still like to do a good job.  Yes, I did graduate college Magna Cum Laude with straight A's.  I still expect a lot of myself and those around me, but I have adopted a philosophy of moderation rather than one of constant perfection.  Because that is, of course, impossible and any control we think we have is an illusion.

How does this affect my relationship with food?  Before WLS it didn't really affect it that much.  I was still trying to do all the old things I'd done over the years that had worked to keep my weight normal, but didn't seem to be working any longer.  Except for binging and purging.  I gave that up a long time ago.  But post-WLS, I begin to apply all of the things I'd learned over the years in my regular life about moderation and not beating myself up for mistakes.  I eat all foods that I want and I've lost a lot of weight.  Portion control was apparently my problem and the band takes care of that for me.  I try to eat healthy foods most of the time, but I also eat what sounds good and I make room for treats.  I watch my calories a bit, but I'm not anal about it.  I don't have a calorie limit.  I usually eat about 1,450 calories a day, but sometimes I eat more (like when I drink a bunch of beer). 

I've noticed from reading these blogs that often times when people feel like they've eaten something "bad", they beat themselves up and have a difficult time reigning themselves in after the slip.  Sometimes they'll talk about wanting to eat a specific food that they think is "bad" and then eating something else, but then eating a bunch of other foods afterwards.  They weren't satisfied by the original thing they had because they wanted the "bad" food.  So they eat and eat to try to feel satisfied or to punish themselves for the original "bad" desires.  I can relate.  Although my typical M.O. back in my bulimia days was to purge or starve after overeating, I sometimes continued binging as a means of self-punishment.  Until I realized that if I just ate the stupid thing I wanted and let myself enjoy it, I could be satisfied.  Duh. 

Dang, this is a long post!  If you're still with me, thank you.  I am so happy with the place I'm at these days.  I want to sing it from the rooftops that I have hope!  I found a way out of the self-imposed misery I used to live in.  I realize that what works for me may not work for you.  We are all different.  No one has walked the same path as me, but I hope that sharing my experiences may help you as a cautionary tale or a good example.  Happy Wednesday!  

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Drinking and banding

I got drunk last night.  On a Monday.  I should say I almost never drink.  My fella is trying to get a job at a local brewery and he volunteers a lot of time there.  Last night they had an event at a local pub so we went.  I started with a beer and was very tipsy.  After an hour or so my fella asked if I wanted another and I said no.  He got me one anyway so of course I drank it. 

I tried to eat to mitigate the damage.

I was seriously wasted.  On two beers.

I looked online this morning and found an article about gastric bypass and alcohol. I don't know if any of the results that they discovered can be applied to gastric banding, but basically they found that RNY patients got drunk on less alcohol and stayed drunk longer post-op. 

Interesting, no?  Any thoughts?