Thursday, March 14, 2013

It's all on me

So no matter the choice one makes about how they are going to approach the battle with weight loss, the rub is that it's always on the individual to make it a success.  There are a zillion reasons why diets don't work...and they are all 100% valid because the gap is this - the weight we gained wasn't entirely our choosing, but any given diet is not 100% comprehensive and doesn't address all the basic needs of weight loss.

Example, you can have a meal plan, but without recipes, YOU have to make the best possible decisions about whether or not the chicken is low fat, low carb, low sodium, or properly portioned enough to impact the number on the scale.  AND YOU are the person responsible for figuring out how much exercise you have to do to burn off the chicken * 2 in order to make sure that the net result on that scale is a decrease.

You can have a personal trainer, BUT, if you're still eating high calorie, high carb, high fructose foods, you're not going to see much more than muscle tone when it comes to the scale.

You can have recipes too - but if you're using processed foods, you're still going to have to figure out other ways to counterbalance the effects they have on the scale.

You can have an inflatable band wrapped around your stomach or your insides turned into a crashing jenga game, and still destiny is in your hands - you still have to work at weight loss - it's not automatic.

I started full fluids yesterday.  Let me tell you that first cup of coffee with 1% milk and a tsp of sweetener never tasted so good.  I enjoyed a pediasure, and cream of broccoli soup from a mix with water and 1% milk, and 0 fat 0 sugar vanilla yogurt.  Ahh - talk about living large I tell ya.  I was more than satisfied and felt energized.  I went all day long and well into the early evening busy as a bee, and felt fantastic.  I'm sure the amount of calories I took in was less than 1000.  Still.  This morning, my weight stayed flat.  Why?  How in the world is it possible?

Well of course I'm still healing.  I was busy, but never broke a sweat.  I came out of ketosis.  So immediately, I adjusted.  I had the same 0 fat 0 sugar yogurt but I added a 1/3 scoop of vanilla protein powder.  The same coffee I've always had.   I had half a meal replacement shake and another half cup of yogurt with protein powder.  My total calorie intake has to be less than 300 or thereabouts at this point.  And I've been chasing a kid and hauling her back and forth to the doctor.  My midday weigh in shows me up 2 pounds.  How in the world is this even possible.

As I'm working through the possibilities, it's the fact that I'm eating processed products.  I lost 22 lbs on the pre-op diet.  Nothing I ate was processed.  Imagine that craziness...but I'm not inclined to put a lot of effort into foods I'm ultimately going to have to blend and strain.  If I'm going to put huge effort into my food to make it taste decent, I'm going to do it when I can chew it and enjoy it thanks.

But I'm reading stuff from other people who've recently had the same procedure done, and I'm watching them talk about 1 or 2 lb losses and gains like they had no idea they'd have to do most of the work after surgery, just like they had before.  I'm perplexed by that.  In no way is it really fair - of course not.  We're not fully responsible for the weight we carry when antibiotics and growth hormone are in every fresh piece of meat, fish and fruit or vegetable we eat.  But life's never been fair has it?

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