The Good Stuff

So, I realized I'm keeping a score.  A record of my weight loss only in numbers.  I'm not recognizing the changes that are already demonstrating how much better my life is getting.

That's probably because I'm so focused on the scale to avoid the stuff that scares the bejeebers out of me.  You know, the stuff I'm afraid will come back...either watching the number on the scale creep back up, OR, having to face whatever demons my weight has been shielding me from all this time.

So let's start with awesome stuff.  After all, this is a blog titled Making Lemonade, is it not?

It's stuff that hits you out of the blue, but it seems so ridiculously small, you forget how huge it is.

I crossed both my legs the other day to put my socks on.  Seems ludicrous to call out here, but if I told you I hadn't been able to do that in 3 years, you would see just how big a life change that actually is.  Crazy isn't it?  My right knee has been so inflamed and arthritic that in order to put my socks on every single day, I had to put my knee up on the bed and bend the leg so that I could reach my foot.  The other day, I crossed them without even thinking...It wasn't until I had finished putting on the sock that I realized I wasn't even moving my body the same way and caught on to the change.

I walked downstairs this morning without the assistance of the handrail or leaning against the wall.  Again, it might seem like this is silly to be mentioning, but when you hurt as much as I have for the last three years, walking down a flight of stairs first thing in the morning without assistance was unheard of.  Every muscle in my body ached from the strain of carrying around the extra padding.  My body was swollen so much that I feared the smallest prick of my skin might result in a flood.  Walking down the stairs without wincing at every step and holding onto the railing for dear life is HUGE.

I picked up my 27 lb child and carried her from her bed, down the hall and to the bathroom, without even breathing heavy...this is because I've finally lost more than she weighs, and that means I'm not carrying twice her weight.  Let me tell you how monumental this is.  For two years after she was born I dealt with crippling, debilitating back pain that was a side effect of the spinal block I got to have my c-section.  Combined with my weight issues, there were days when I could barely walk, stand up, sit up...and it took the power of Christ to move my body in the ways I needed to move to look after my toddler.  Stifling back the tears was a daily challenge and forced me to use whatever I could to skirt by the easiest ways possible.  I used an ottoman in front of the sofa to change her diapers rather than get on a floor or take her up to her change table.  We put a double bed in her room so that I could stop rocking her to sleep and instead snuggle her in bed because lifting her up out of the rocking chair and transferring her to her toddler bed was too painful for me.  I think this is the first time I have lifted her and carried her any distance without feeling pain, in her entire life.  This is the hugest possible improvement I could have imagined.

My family has been generally healthy (not hit with plague after plague) for 4 weeks.  This is a first in over a year.

In total (though a few of these are still due to the flu), I've lost 32 lbs.

So here's what I'm deathly afraid of.  I don't really know why I'm so fat in the first place.  I know I'm an emotional eater, but the only traumatic situations I can link any of it to, is the loss of my father at 21, and random pressures and comments people made while I was growing up that they thought would help me manage a healthy weight, but which actually created new stressors.  And I'm afraid that when I lose this extra shield I've been building, that I will discover there was something more to it.  I eat when I am stressed or fearful of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person.  I eat when I'm happy and want to celebrate.  I use food to reward myself, and I can already feel the pangs of wanting to reward my 32 lb loss with some Easter chocolate.  I worry that I won't know how to cope without food or cigarettes (used to be part of the coping mechanism before I quit in 2007).  I worry that my brain has blocked out something from my memory that would cause me to use weight as my protector.  I worry that when I find out who lies beneath all this padding that I'll want something different out of my life, that I won't be simply satisfied with what I have.  I worry.  Full stop.

Of course there's no point in worrying until there's reason too.  Right now, I'm really quite happy that clothes are fitting me better and starting to feel big.  I'm overjoyed that I'm able to do the things I wrote about first in this post.  I'll take these wins and keep moving forward for now.  Will continue to wait for that other shoe to drop, and will work through it when it does...whatever it takes.

The freak show fat lady will never be me again.

Flu Diet Phenomenon

No matter your choice of method for losing weight, nothing helps break the plateaus and weight barriers quite like a good bout of the flu.

Since I started on solids again last week, it's been a struggle to break the 30 lb barrier.  I bounced up and down, and well, getting around some of the junk in the house has been a bit challenging, particularly with Easter on it's way, and birthday's fast approaching.  Yeah - to say sticking to a good diet was hard would be an understatement.  I honestly could have knocked it out of the park if I hadn't been dealing with Aunt Flo and a husband who can't seem to indulge in my favourite snack foods you know - after I've left the room.

But fast forward to Easter Sunday when I'm woken up twice in the wee hours of the morning by a 2 year old who has decided she misses the times when she wouldn't sleep through the night, and then alarmingly, I'm woken up a third time by you guessed it, the flu.  Yeppers - so much for the big family dinner at mom's.  I ate 1 slice of toast all day long.  yep...when I finally felt good enough to be vertical, I got on the scale to confirm that I was now 5 lbs less than the previous day.  This makes the total weight loss since I started my preop diet to 31 lbs.  Yay me!

So this is the key - you can lose plenty of weight if you limit yourself to water and one slice of bread each day.  You'll die doing it, and it feels dreadful...but it works!

If only I could figure out how to bottle that and sell it!!!

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?