future former fat chick

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I am almost done with school!!! A few more months, then you can stick a fork in me because I will be done!  Woo hoo!  I cannot wait.  

Otherwise, life is still status quo.  I did rejoin Weight Watchers because I do want to get back to my lowest weight.  I am still fluctuating bewteen the high 160's/low 170's.  I am still working out, thank God, but the weight is not coming off very easily because I need to be more disciplined with my calories.  Boy, those calories are sneaky and they sure add up, LOL!

I must say that my loose skin is REALLY starting to bother me.  It's hard to get clothes that fit right and sometimes I feel like no matter how hard I exercise, it's not going to make my batwings magically disappear.  I would LOVE to begin plastics maybe around christmas time.  We will hve to wait and see.  I am also hoping (and praying) to buy a house this summer, so it may be difficult to do that and drop thousands in plastics in the same year.  Home purchase is priority one, we will see how things shake out.  God is good and wonderful and mighty, so if it is his will that I begin plastics this year, he will make it happen!

In case you missed it the first time, I cannot wait to be finished school!!!

Hugs to you all.  Jesus loves you!!

School is over on the 12th, thank God!!!!  I cannot wait.  I uploaded two new pictures taken last month.  Two friends and me went to the US Supreme court in Washington to tour and to hear an oral argument.  my friend Tammi is naturally slender - she runs marathons!  My friend, Monica had RNY in 2006.  Doesn't she look great!!!

I hope to be on the boards more when school lets out.  I am determined to maintain my weight this holiday season!

God bless

I haven't been sucked into some black hole or dropped off the face of the earth!  I'm still around but just ridicuously busy with school work this semester!  I cannot wait for it to be over.  I'm not a lazy person and I don't mind school work, but this one professor that I have seems to think that people have nothing to do but his assignments.  I work full time and have other course work and so do most of my classmates but he does not care.  He's an idiot  (and if you happen to be reading this Professsor Darling, I'm talking about YOU, pal...).  

Anyway, I am doing fine.  Everything is status quo on my end, which is a blessing because thing "could" be going horribly wrong but they're not.  I wish the scale were moving down but at least it's not moving up.  

I am meeting up with one of my post-op friends next week that I have not seen for a long time so I am real excited about that.  I am going to take a little disposable camera with me and get her to take some picst hat I can post here.  I really don't look any different than I did on my one year pic but at least I can show off my hair cut.  It's GONE andI love it!  I wore my hair short pre-op but I would have never considered getting it all buzzed off like it is now.    God is good!

Gotta run, I'm supposed to be doing homework right now.  :(

Until next time... Jesus loves you!!!

Boy it’s been a long time since I’ve been here!  My home computer died and I finally replaced it.  Got myself a cute lil’ HP pavilion entertainment edition laptop.  I’m pleased with it – my credit card is not pleased but I am.  When I have to travel for work it will be nice to be able to take along an exercise DVD and play it on my laptop to get in some exercise at the hotel.  I despise exercise machines and with my laptop, I could pop in a Walk Away the Pounds DVD and follow it up with some pilates.  Cool, huh? 

So let’s see – what’s been going on with me….  Guess I’ll start with the weight loss front.  I was two years out last May.  Times really flies doesn’t it?  Seems just like yesterday I was dying to get my drain out!  Anyway, not too much to report on the weight loss front.  My all-time low was 157.5 but I had the typical small regain that everyone says happens at about two years.  I understand that a 10 to 15 pound regain is typical but thankfully, my regain was only about 8 to 10 pounds and my weight fluctuates between 163 and 168.  When Auntie Flo comes for her monthly visit, I pack on a “huge” amount of water weight - I look about six months pregnant, have awful back pain, feel like I about to split my slacks, even my thighs look bigger during this time.  A week after, I’m back to normal but it sucks to have to deal with that two weeks out of every month!  I suppose it’s always been that way but I was too big to notice the extra bloating when I was preop.  Anyway, bottom line – I am still struggling to get the last 30 or so pounds off and get to 135 (I’m 5’2”).  At this point, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that this may be it as far as weight loss goes until I start having plastics.  I’d love to get back below 160, but it is so freakin hard – many of you longer-term post-ops already know that. 

I have switched from Weight Watchers Core plan to flex points.  Without going into all the weight watchers details, suffice it to say that I am way too greedy to be on Core.  With Core, you don’t count anything but just “eat until your satisfied” from a specified list of permissible foods.  It’s like the honors system.  Well, unfortunately, there is nothing honorable about the way I could eat if left to my own devices; I could be “satisfied” grazing all day long.  So back to flex points.  It’s a better way to keep me honest.  I am not the best or most consistent food tracker in the world, but I am working on getting better with tracking all of my points.  I do the online version of weight watchers since I can’t really stomach meetings right now.  

I still struggle with pretzels, peanut butter, peanuts, crackers, and sugar free cookies.  I try not to have those things everyday, but I feel like I have them too often nonetheless.  When I do buy them, I only get a single-serving pack at the store because I do not trust myself to portion out a larger bag.  It goes back to my being way too greedy.  I still struggle with weekend grazing and “splurging.”  So bottom line, my eating could be a lot better than what it is, but it could also be a lot worse.  On the positive side, I am still completely “sugar-free, bread-free, red-meat free, and pork-free” for over two years now.  And I honestly don’t miss any of it!  I am still practically white rice and white pasta free – I can count on two hands the number of times I have had any over the past 2+ years.  I have oatmeal every work day (usually for lunch and usually with ½ cup fresh raspberries – YUM!!!!!), I have a protein shake for breakfast every work day, and I get in 80 ounces of water every work day – I say every “work day” because it can get ugly on weekends.  Also on the positive side, I take my vitamins and supplements every day – weekends included – and I generally eat pretty well.  It’s just frustrating to still be “dieting” yet not losing any weight but simply maintaining.  On the exercise front, exercise is going really well.  Diet.. meh – exercise… oh yeah!  I can do kick boxing, step aerobics, pilates, cardio dance with complex choreography, weight lifting, Leslie Sansone’s 5 mile walk DVD, her DVD’s with jogging intervals… all without a second thought.  God is so amazing! 

Let’s see what else.  I told my older sister for the 100^th time to stop asking me about my clothing size.  She’s always been the smallest sister but now that I am the smallest, she’s about to flip out.  *rolls eyes*  I’m still chronically single with no dates in site.  My car is being retarded – to the tune of about a grand in necessary repairs.  Oh well, it is ten years and at least I do not have a car payment.  I still have not updated my pics but I’ll get around to it… eventually.  School is about to restart and yes, it still sucks.  Thankfully I finish in May.  My mother has been in the hospital a couple of times this summer with various health issues, but she’s doing okay now relatively speaking.  My boss is still an idiot who would not know the truth or an actual day’s work if she fell over it.  I’m still trying to pay off that last credit card so I can buy a house in February or March.  I have not been in for any plastics consults yet.  I cannot get anything done until summer ’08 the earliest, so why get myself all excited now?  I did get my two front teeth bonded.  One was chipped and the other all uneven but they look pretty good now.  The dentist billed them as multi-surface fillings, so my dental insurance covered most of it.  

I guess that’s all the news that’s fit to print.  Thanks to all for the lovely notes!  Jesus loves you and wants to be your Savior today!  Until next time....

 

 

 

In the interest of complete honesty and opennness, I wanted to say that I have been eating like a pig for the past two days.  I have been off from work for a few days and I everytime I opened my mouth, I threw something into it.  A sugar free cookie... a handful of peanuts... a piece of cheese... a couple of crackers... a sugar free fudgsickel... you name it and in it went.  All really salty stuff and this morning it really showed up on the scale.  I feel so bloated and swollen that I could pop.  I even feel heavy in my workouts.  I was soooo good last week with my diet and just totally blew my progress in a few days.  Oh well, now time to get back on track today.  No sense in saying "I'll wait until Monday."  It's back on track TO-DAY, this minute, this second.  I know what to do and its time to do it. 

Jesus is so good to me;  I couldn't ask for a better friend, protector, leader, savior!

Not a lot of time to write today but I wanted to drop in and say how grateful I am for all the wonderful blessings God has bestowed upon me over the past two years.  I could have never gotten to where I am now without this surgery and I think God for it every day. 

When I made my last entry, I was in a bad mood.  That bad mood lasted for about an hour then I was totally fine.  I just never got around to making another journal entry to say so.  I am not feeling defeated at all.  I literally stepped off the scale that morning got really annoyed to be up rather than down after two weeks of hardcore dieting and typed that journal.   You gotta vent when you get frustrated and let your feelings out.  Not saying how I felt is what helped me eat my way up to 319 in the first place.  I would be feeling awful, pretend to everyone else that everything was just dandy and go off by myself and use food to deal with it.  I promised myself that I would keep it real in my journal.  When I was having good days and emotions I would say so, when I was having bad days and feeling frustrated I would say so, when I fell off the bandwagon and ate like a pig I would fess up, when I didn’t exercise like I should I would fess up, when I reached a new goal I would tell people about it.  I am not giving up and have not intention of ever giving up, but just wanted to share the bad days with the good days.  This road we are on is not easy.  We will encouter some bumps along the way and sometimes the wagon will even tip over.  But we have to know how to deal with it in a constructive way and God is still teaching me how todo that.  I think one constructive way to to talk about it.  So I vented and sulked for a day, then got off my pity-pot and got back to work.

Anyway, I am still doing well.  Exercise is still going really well and my eating has much improved over the past couple of months.  I have banished cheese, peanut butter, crackers, low fat chips, and pretzels from my diet.  I may only have one of those things as a treat one time per week.  I now focus on lean protein such as grilled chicken and fish and water, water, water.  It's not really showing on the scale (still hovering at around 163) and that can be frustrating but I know I am doing the right things.

Until next time... Jesus loves you and wants to be your savior today!

 

 

 

 

 

I am in a bad mood today, so this is not going to be one of those "warm and fuzzy" posts......

I am getting increasingly frustrated and concerned about my weight because it is creeping up.  I have not seen the 150's since January when it was 159.5.  This morning I stepped on the scale and it was 170.  It has been in the high 160's/low 170's for a couple of months now.  

I know a few pounds are muscle because I started a new weight training program (the "Get Ripped Program) about 8 weeks ago and I can see more muscle.  I also know I have water weight issues because  yesterday morning, I weighed 167.5 and this morning, it was 170.

But even with all of that, I know that some of it is weight gain.  Last  week, I banished all pretzels, crackers, and cheese from my diet.  It has not really made a difference on the scale, though.  This week, I will focus on tracking my food and eliminating as much sodium as possible.  

I wanted to be in the low 150's by my two-year anniversary on May 24th , but that ain't gonna happen.  Nuh-uh.  No way.  What really annoys me is that my weight is exactly the same as it was this time last year.  I basically saw no appreciable weight loss in the past 12 months - only bouncing up and down in the same 10 pound range.

I am sick of hearing about people who get to goal in 12 months without lifting a finger to workout.  I am sick of hearing about people who get to goal in 12 months while still eating sugars and refined carbs.  I am sick of reading "what did you eat today" threads and seeing people who are more than 18 months out proudly proclaiming "I had two tic-tacs and and a fork-full of green beans and I SOOOOOO full...."  

I exercise most days of the week,  I do high intensity aerobics, I lift weights, I do pilates, I do not overeat and I "still" cannot get to goal.  Frankly, I am beginning to wonder why am I trying so freakin' hard if my body is not going to cooperate. 

Losing weight is a LIFE-LONG struggle.  Whoever said weight loss surgery was a ticket to no more dieting was dead wrong and deserves a smack.  I've got to watch every morsel that goes into my mouth I WILL become morbidly obese again.  

Hopefully, I'll be in a better state of mind next month.

Another month gone by.  The year will be over before we know it.  I am still plugging away here trying to get to 153 by my two year anniversary on May 24th and ultimately to 135.  Not seeing a whole lot of scale movement - actually, not seeing any scale movement.  Oh well, it is what it is.  I would much rather be struggling to lose these last 20 pounds to get below 140 than be struggling to lose 170 pounds to get down from 319! 

Exercise is still going really really well.  I know I am building some muscle because I can see the definition in my arms and shoulders.  I am doing a new weight training program in addition to my cardio.  I have always done weight training, but this new program kicks it up several notches.  I have been doing it for about a month or so and I can't wait to see what I look like after doing it faithfully for three months.  Anyway, I will get some new pictures up when I reach two years.

That's about all the news on my end.  Toodles!

Thirty-six years young....   Actually I am a little freaked out at being on the downside of 40 and heading there at break-neck speed.  Everything else with me is still status quo.  I have decided that I am not updating my weight statistics until May, which is my two-year surgiversary, then every 6 months thereafter.  I am not "newly" post-op anymore, so my weight does not really change from month-to-month.

Oh, here is something new.... I have stepped up the intensity of my workouts.  When I say "intensity" I am NOT talking about time - I still workout about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes through the week and maybe a little longer on weekends.  When I say "intensity" I am talking about how hard I am working.  I bough a few "advanced" level aerobics and weight training DVDs and am so happy with myself when I can get through them.  I have ordered a few more.  Maybe this will help take off a few more inches from my lower body.

Anyway, that's about it for now.

I have lost all my Xmas weight except 1.5 pounds (down to 159.5) - been sticking pretty close to the Weight Watcher Core plan and am back on track with my workouts.  I am really psyched about that.  School starts this week - not looking forward to it at all. I guess that’s about all on my end.