Life...

Has been busy lately and I've not been making the time to blog properly. Lots has been going on. My mother-in-law is terminally ill. I injured my foot. School has started for my step-daughter. And so on and so on. I have kept myself on track pretty well and am down to 225 pounds. That's down 125 pounds from my highest weight of 350.

And I feel amazing!! I cleaned out my closet this weekend and got rid of tons of clothes that were too big. I needed to buy a dress for a visitation this weekend, so off to the store I went. I ended up buying a plus size dress still because the selection in the misses dresses was pitiful. The dress is a 14W and I feel amazing in it. I also got a suit because I'm job hunting. The suit came from the misses department and is an XL. I haven't worn clothes from the misses department since middle school!! 

I am including some pictures below for comparison. Me and my hubby yesterday (dressed up for a visitation) versus our wedding last year. I don't look like the same person!! (I can't get the pics to line up side by side for some reason, but you get the idea.)

Aug 23,2015

Sep 27, 2014

I can honestly say my husband and step-daughter have both been awesome through this whole journey. My husband is super supportive and has changed his cooking to meet my new needs. I see lots of people complain about not having supportive families and I always think how blessed I am to have the family I do. Once I made the decision to go through with this, my husband said okay and jumped right on board. He loved me at 350 and he loves me now. What a blessing he really is. 

Well, after all the closet cleaning, I needed to go shopping. So, mom and I headed to the mall yesterday. I really needed pants that weren't jeans. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE jeans. But I am tired of wearing them ever single day. Plus I only have 2 pairs that fit. One pair that fits really well and one pair that's getting too big.  

We got to the store and the first pair of pants I put on fit. WTH!??!?! Usually, shopping for pants takes hours and hours and multiple stores and lots of crying. These pants were a 14W, so I went to the misses department and found the same pants for $10 less per pair. Hmmm, sounds like I should try on the misses ones. I tried on the 16 and they were a no, but the 18s were a yes. So, I bought PANTS from the regular department. 

At home, I put all my clothes away and was so excited that I spent 45 minutes in my closet making outfits and planning what to wear today. Picture below of the outfit I picked. I feel amazing! Plus someone at work said I look thinner. Awesome, right?!?!

Labs are Back.... Finally

Okay, so I just downloaded my lab results and reviewing them. Overall, things look pretty good. CBC with Differential all are in range, meaning no infections or anything along those lines. I knew that already, but they always test this for some reason.

On to the more important things, The Metabolic Panel. This is where the mal-absorption issues could start to rear their heads. I have a couple of flags on that for being below the normal range and one was high. I'm going to start with the low flags, Potassium and Chloride. My sodium was close to low, but not there.

Potassium is pretty important in regulating your heart and keeping your body going, so being low on it can cause some major issues. A deficiency in potassium can cause fatigue, insomnia, depression, muscular weakness, and many cardiovascular issues. Oh, hmmm... I am experiencing those highlighted symptoms right now! *insert light bulb here* 

I am supposed to be increasing the variety of foods I eat, so I did some research on foods that are high in potassium. Beans, spinach, yogurt, salmon, and avocado were all on the list and are things I can eat.

Chloride works with potassium and helps regulate the Ph balance in your system. Being low on this is pretty darn rare. Basically, I need to eat more salt and saltier foods. Odd, isn't it?

I was high on the BUN/Creatinine Ratio basically meaning I was dehydrated. My level was 21, normal range is 8 to 20. This could be the reason for the low Potassium and Chloride or the the low Potassium and Chloride could be causing the dehydration. The 3 flags are definitely linked. So, time for some beans and spinach with a good pinch of salt!

Only one more flag on the report and I suspected this was coming. My Iron saturation is at 14. Normal range is 15 to 55. All my other Iron measurements were in range, but on the lower side. I think I just need to eat some more iron rich foods to bump things up a bit and everything should be fine. Fortunately, many of the foods that are high in potassium are also high in Iron. So, adding some beans, spinach, and more seafood to my diet should help balance everything out.

Not a bad report at all!

Nutritionist Visit

So, yesterday was my first time seeing the nutritionist since surgery. Let me start by saying I LOVE my nutritionist. She is 100% awesome, very encouraging and very knowledgeable. She has talked me out of crazy expectations via e-mail a couple of times since surgery. She's taught me about plateaus and how to deal with them. She's taught me how to eat low carb and she's taught me how to exercise. So, yes, she's amazing. Her support and guidance have made this journey happen for me.

They have this super fancy scale there that tells you not only how much you weigh, but what your body composition is. Now, I have no idea how it works, but it's pretty cool. So, I hop on the scale as instructed and wait for the beep. Then this handy little receipt prints out. It has a lot of information on it about your total weight, your fat mass, your fat free mass, etc.

Drum roll please..... I am down 60 pounds since my pre-op visit on 4/1/2015. And ALL of it was fat!! Since I first started seeing her, I have lost 96 pounds of FAT. Shocking! That's a person. That's amazing, stupendous, and more adjectives that I can't think of right now. It's hard to put that in perspective. I know I'm smaller, but I still feel big. So, I found some images to put it into perspective. First up, 100 pounds of fat on a table. Odd, I know, but it puts it in perspective to think I was carrying that around with me.

And then there's this cute web page where you can go put in your weight loss and it compares it to standard objects. So I put in 96 since that is the amount of fat I have lost since February. (I would put in my total weight loss of 120, but it only goes  to 100.) I can't begin to imagine almost 19,000 beer caps. Can you?





She told me I was doing very well with my diet, but that I need to get more consistent with the working out part of it. She said that if I continue being inconsistent, I will start to see muscle loss and other issues. I don't want that, so it's off to the gym I go. I went on Monday and plan to go today, tomorrow, and Friday. I feel better when I go and I sleep better when I go. I know I need to do it, so it's just a matter of making it a habit now.

So, all in all, I got a very good report. The labs on my vitamin levels will be back on Thursday and I will update everyone on those when I get the reports.

Coloring as Therapy

Lately, I've been coloring. It sounds childish, I know. And my husband makes fun of me for it, but I don't really care. It's doing really good things for me. It relieves stress and anxiety, it keeps me from mindlessly snacking, its a relatively inexpensive hobby.

Here's an articles from the Huffington Post about it:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/10/07/colouring-books-for-adults-stress_n_5944298.html

And another one from the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/express/wp/2015/03/24/coloring-books-for-grown-ups-can-ease-stress-and-calm-the-inner-child/

For me, it allows me to unwind from my day and be calm. It gives me something to do to occupy my mind and my hands. It allows me to be creative in a way that I loved when I was younger. Is it odd to do the same things now that I enjoyed when I was younger? Maybe, but who the hell cares.

I am thrilled to have a hobby that makes me feel better. It's helping big time with my anxiety issues. Sometimes, I color Mandalas. What's a mandala? They are very, very relaxing to me. Some people believe that coloring them and hanging them around you can bring good vibes in. I'm not sure about that, but I do smile when I see mine hanging at my desk. The colors make me feel more cheerful.

1. Mandala (Sanskrit: मण्डल Maṇḍala, 'circle') is a spiritual and ritual symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism, representing the Universe. The basic form of most mandalas is a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point.

Sometimes I color other sheets. So far, I've been finding free sheets and printing them off the internet, but I have ordered some books from Amazon. I'll review them when they arrive and let you know what I think. I use a set of Prismacolor colored pencils that I've had for years. They were expensive when I bought them, but the quality is stellar in my opinion. I am considering markers for coloring as well, but haven't ordered any as of yet. 

I am far from a perfect colorist as can be seen above, but it's not about trying to achieve perfection. It's about doing something that brings me joy. So, if you're really stressing out... try breaking out some crayons and do some coloring :)

Oh no.... It's a Plateau

Anyone who has ever tried to lose a significant amount of weight is familiar with the dreaded plateau. Part of me was hoping that having weight loss surgery would mean no more plateaus. Nope, not even close. I hit them ALL the time. I hit my first one three weeks out from surgery and freaked out. I e-mailed my wonderful nutritionist who told me I was doing everything right and that this was normal.

Her exact words were "Moving forward you will have periods of weight loss for about 3 weeks and a weight plateau for a week to week and half.  The average weight loss after 6 weeks post-op will be anything from 8-12 lbs a month". 

This is another one of those things that no one mentioned before surgery. I like having all my facts beforehand, but I'm glad to have this information now. It's saved me a lot of stressing out. And she was right, I lose for around 3 weeks then plateau (or stall) for about a week. Then the weight starts coming off again.

The surgeon gave me a goal of 10 pounds per month of loss, which I am mostly meeting. So how do I get the scale moving again? It depends on the situation. The first thing I do is check to see if I'm still in ketosis. What's ketosis? It's a state in which your body burns stored fat for energy rather than carbohydrates. How do I test for it? I pee on a little stick first thing in the morning and if it turns purple, I'm in ketosis. If it doesn't change, I'm not.

If I'm not in ketosis, I spend 2 days on a slightly different diet and test again. The special diet is a protein shake for breakfast, another protein shake for lunch, and 4 ounces of plain meat for dinner. Sounds hard and the first day is, but by the 2nd day it's not bad at all. I check for ketosis again and if I'm still not in it, I repeat the special diet again the next day and repeat the test again the next morning.

If I test and I'm in ketosis and still on the plateau, I maintain my normal diet and change up my activity level a bit. Maybe I'll do a different cardio at the gym or I'll add more weight to my sets. Right now, it all balances out in a week or so and I'm back to losing. Sometimes, I will try having a day where I consume a few more calories to try giving my body a jolt.

I know that as I progress, the weight is going to be harder and harder to lose. I haven't been below 220 since middle school (I think) and I am approaching that zone. Sitting at 232 right now. I see the nutritionist today and am interested to hear what she has to say about my diet. Diet is only one component of this journey and I am working on getting more active. I actually RAN yesterday. Yes, me... I ran. Well, maybe it was more of a jog.

And I SLEPT!!! Okay, so if going to the gym is the cure for my insomnia... I'm going there every damn day!