1 YEAR SURGIVERSARY

A year ago today I was in Mexicali, Mexico.  I was spending the night in a hotel after finishing some tests  Dr. Alberto Aceves was my surgeon.  He and all of his staff are very thorough, helpful and accessible.  The care I received was excellent and I would recommend the option of undergoing bariatric surgery with him in Mexico to anyone.
and interviews with the Bariatric surgeons at the Hospital Almater.

My experience with weight loss surgery has been chronicled here in the past year.  I did great in the hospital but after a week or or at home I started having some problems with tolerating foods.  I went as slowly as I could introducing different soft foods and then more options into my diet to meet my nutrition and protein needs - I had a difficult time for about 3 months but slowly found the foods and vitamins that worked for me.  There was, and in some ways still is, a certain sameness to what I eat each day.  I remained as patient as I could and put up with bouts of nausea and gastric distress when I strayed from what my body could handle. Having those outcomes in mind makes it a lot easier to stay on the straight and narrow - believe me!

My weight loss has been quite swift and I suppose to people around me, pretty shocking. My kids never knew me at the size I am now - for my husband it was a distant memory!

 It may seem like fast = easy.  In some ways I guess it has been.  When you have a physical barrier to overeating it does make it "easier."  Though I've worked  hard to do it right:  get my vitamins, protein, liquids and exercise - just like all the other times I have "dieted."  Except now this is my life and not a diet I can safely stray away from on a whim.  To maintain lifelong health - I have to stick with these requirements.

I am proud that I have done so well in this first year and I believe I can safely maintain my new found healthy weight and lifestyle.

I want to thank my good friend Christina for making this possible and all my friends and family who have been cheering me on!

STALLED ON THE BRINK

For two weeks I have been waiting for those 2 pounds to drop.  When that happens,  I

will have lost 100 pounds since I started my BPD-DS journey.

It has come to this.  I have stalled.  It always happens.  It happens to most people on weight loss plans.  Our bodies settle in, find equilibrium or whatever it is called.  That and I am probably eating too many carbs. 

I love fruit and have gone from eating very small amounts of grapefruit or berries a couple of times a week to munching on grapes and mango and even some kiwi. Sigh.

I also bought some whole wheat bread for my daughter when she was home and ate 2 pieces of it, toasted, with peanut butter and honey.  Now the bread has been sent to live in the freezer until the next time she comes home.

Further transgressions came in the form of Dark Chocolate Covered Almonds from Sprouts.  Even though I only had 5-8 per day, they are now banished. I bought them after I tasted a sample, then I checked out the nutritional info on the website and there is more added sugar than I expected considering the taste and that it is made with dark chocolate.  A deceptive little treat.

The last sin against my low carb diet is - I made risotto.  And it was good.  I could only eat about half a cup of it, including the added chicken and arugula - but we are talking white rice here. 

So for the past two weeks all I have lost is more hair! 

I have learned my lesson - back to logging all my meals and snacks on Sparkpeople. I'll hit the scale again next week.

MAKING CHOICES

I had a job interview after work today and Tom offered to take me out to dinner.  I realize from the foods he is craving and wanting to have when we go out that he is missing some of the pasta dishes I used to make!

I ordered an appetizer, which is my new entree these days.  Two nice fat crab cakes arrived.  I ate about 3/4 of one of them and took the other one home to have for lunch tomorrow!  Sometimes I am frustrated by how little I can eat.  That old "mouth hunger" is still there and something I need to be mindful of because as time goes by, my stomach will be able to handle more food.  I am lucky that I had already been well educated about and for the most part living with a high protein/low carb diet.  For many people it is a big learning curve - so different from what they have been taught about the best way to lose weight.

In many ways it is so much easier to make good choices when there are specific limits in place, things that are good and others that are bad.  For me, tracking my foods with limits or levels in mind for my carbs, fats, proteins, etc. gives me that structure to work within. 

Tom and I went to the Farmer's Market the other day and he stopped by a bakery stand to get something and was upset that I wasn't going to get something, too.  But I knew I would be able to find a snack that worked for me and just a few stands away I bought a packet of almonds which I enjoyed. In the past I would have felt let down that I "couldn't have" a yummy pastry, but right now I am happy with the better choice for my health and my goals.

OVER IT?

Is it possible that I have eaten so many cookies, candies and cakes in the past months that I reached some sort of satiety?  Because I went off sugar 5 days ago and I haven't felt a blip of a craving.   Nothing. 

I cleaned out the pantry yesterday and tossed some really old stuff hidden behind my husband's sports supplements, some unmarked bulk purchases (I need to label the stuff from the health food department), some lingering crackers, 5 half consumed bags of tortilla chips, 2 half consumed boxes of cereal and a bag of beef jerky with an expiration date in 2009!

 I put the dangerous stuff up high and out of sight.  Maybe if I have to pull out the step stool to get to it, I will have time to reconsider whether I should eat it.

So it has been a good week so far.  I started my food log on SparkPeople and will get focused on calorie reduction this next week.  Monday is weigh in day.

STEP 1 AGAIN

I mentioned in my main blog that I don't need to make a resolution to lose weight and get into shape - it holds honorary,  perennial status.

But I do need to have an approach.  January my goal is to get off and stay off sugar.  I started today.  My experience is that the physical "withdrawal" hits on day 2 or 3.  So I have planned to have some celery, carrots, nuts and popcorn on hand to nibble when the cravings hit.  I am also going to avoid the other bugaboos - like things made with white flour which can also set off those cravings.

My many years of experience tell me that after 5 days or so the sweets craving will subside and I can move to a new phase in my attack.  I am giving myself all of January to get my carby little  ducks in a row.  I have been pulling out veggie recipes and making meal plans.

I have a big clean out the pantry day planned, too.  My husband loves his sugar, but I can buy him things I won't be tempted by.  However, when the will power is low, I am known to go through the pantry and get creative.  So all the little leftover cookie makings will go out - the coconut, the toffee bits come to mind.

I am trying to get up the nerve to put one of those weight loss "tickers" on the sidebar.  I am not in the habit of revealing my actual weight.  Who am I kidding? I NEVER reveal my actual weight.  So we'll see about that leap.