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And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

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Adagio

I like my new ticker tape of kitties. It shows me how far I've come- more than half way to goal. The last ten pounds or so have come off slow thanks to my love affair with sweets. Oddly enough I was never much of a "sweetie" prior to LB surgery, though I could eat my share of the coconut cream pie at Thanksgiving. I was more of a "salty" personality. But on those days when my band just doesn't seem interested in cooperating with the program and tightens up like a boa constrictor, sweets like ice cream and milk shakes just slide down beautifully. Then the band returns to normal and I'm back in the habit of sweets.   I know what to do, of course, and I'm not asking for advice; it is just nice to have a place to write this stuff down knowing there are people out there that have been and are still going through the same thing.   My weight loss has not been dramatic- no thirty pound months for me!- but I am pleased both with the loss and with my usually cheerful attitude about it all. Last time I was at this weight, I thought I was the size of a box car, but when I compare it to where I was 53 pounds ago, I smile. Heck, thirty years ago I thought I was a whale at 5'7" and 145 pounds. If nothing else, I have a better sense of my own proportions than I used to.   Life is good, even with ice cream and even though it takes me almost six months to lose ten pounds. 186 and headed down, albeit slowly.
Llyra

Llyra

2
 

En l'air

"Up in the air" sums up recent events around my house. My son is going through a period of distress which affects all of us. We have hopes for a quick and satisfactory conclusion, but it has been disconcerting and upsetting to watch events unfold. My daughter is working her way through her last year of high school and her first semester of college simultaneously. Coming to terms with having her go away to college in a very few months is proving more difficult than I thought it would be. I'm not such a hoovering bird mom that I fear an empty nest, but she is good company and my husband and I will miss her.   In May I retired from being a legal assistant specializing in civil litigation. I have not missed it for a single minute, though not having the regular extra paycheck each pay period has made a difference in our household budget. I now write for a local newspaper as well as continuing to teach dance and needlework design. These are far more congenial occupations for me than the law, but I am still learning to balance my life between work and the demands of a family that doesn't seem to grasp that I do work even though I don't go to an office each day.   To complicate matters just a little more, I am dealing with personal health issues, some of which must be dealt with ASAP and others that can be put off for a few years if I'm lucky. The biggest one and the one that affects my weight loss program the most is a problem with my thyroid. A biopsy came back negative, but the nodules are still suspicious enough that my doctor says the left lobe of my thyroid needs to come out. I see the surgeon who did my lapband surgery on Thursday and will ask when he can do this latest surgry. If solving my thyroid problems means I will quit being cold, constantly sleepy, dried out, hoarse, etc., I will be glad to do it. I also can't help but wonder if it will kick up the speed of weight loss.   As of last week, I was down to 196 pounds. I have lost weight much more slowly than many people who have lap bands, but have been mostly content with my progress. I go through periods when I eat the wrong things or between meals, none of which does me any good, but which hasn't totally derailed me, either. The last couple of weeks have been more off track than usual because of an almost unconscious return to stress eating. Well, I'm conscious of it now, so can start to do something about it.   Dang. Don't you hate it when you become fully cognicent of a bad habit and can no longer indulge in it with impunity? :thumbup:   On the up side of life, I've had the pleasure of packing up my size 22s for the consignment shop and shopping for interim clothes in the misses section instead of in the plus sizes. I don't want to buy a lot because I intend to shrink out of it by this time next year. On the other hand, wearing clothes that hang off my shoulders is inconvenient, unflattering, and not much fun. My favorite purchase was a pair of size 15-16 Wrangler Jet jens. I feel positively (dare I say it??) normal again.   I am still about forty pounds from where I'd like to be, but I am over halfway to my somewhat vague goal. If I can level out between 155 and 165, I'll be content. When I started this lapband venture, the dietician at the hospital told me that on average people lost about half of what they wished to lose. I have to aim at not being average, then, because I am not ready to give up yet, getting side-tracked occasionally not withstanding.   That being said, I am very happy with my new jeans and my newly recovered ability to get on my horse without a mounting block. I intend to enjoy each weight milestone along the way, without obsessing over how fast I'm losing or where exactly I'm going. I spent a lot of years trying to stay at or reach some magic number on the scale, and it just didn't work for me.   I do have concerns that I've perhaps stretched my mini-stomach out in recent weeks. Just happened to come across an old but now ressurrected thread on the forum about this subject that gave me some information I need for my next step. Don't see any reason to have a barium test to find out if my mini-stomach is stretched or not. If its true, then a week or so of liquids will help; if it's not true, a few days of full liquids won't hurt me. Either way, it'll be a chance to revamp my committment to this way of life.
Llyra

Llyra

3
 

Stumble

Up one and a half pounds this week. I suspect half is due to the amount of ice cream I ate during this hot week and the other half is the water I am retaining, also due to the heat.   My next goal is 200 by Labor Day with 4.5 pounds to go. I think I can do it and if I don't make it by Labor Day, surely the week after. I am not going to obsess. I am not going to obsess. I am not going to...   There is something about approaching a goal that panics me into making decisions that look calculated for failure. I can't think of the number of times I have been within a few pounds of a long-desired goal only to have my weight creep steadily upward. Obviously there is no one around to sabotage me but myself and I wonder why on earth I do it.   Time to speak firmly but lovingly to myself:   Look, Llyra, honey, I think you are getting into a panic because obtaining something you want very much implies that you can also lose that thing once you have it. Is it really less painful to give up within site of a goal and watch it slip away than it is to obtain that goal and fear eventually losing it?   I know, I know, this is a lifelong pattern with you in everything from business success to weight loss success: you get within inches of the top of the heap and voluntarily slide back down. Well, there is no reason why you can't change a pattern that you've outgrown and that serves no purpose except to frustrate you. It's not like dipping below 200 pounds is something you've never done before- did it hurt the other times you did it? No, it felt pretty good.   The very idea also induces a panicky fear of not being able to reach the goal and that is what you need to deal with now. Okay. Take a deep breath. Blow it out. Another. Blow. One more. And- ahhhhhhhhhh.   You can do it the same way you've done other things: one step at a time. The step for tonight is to be done eating for the day. That's all. Just be done eating for today. Tomorrow you can have yogurt, fruit and oatmeal for breakfast, salad with cheese and nuts for lunch, and hmmm, maybe antelope stew for dinner with a couple of crackers and more fruit for a snack if you need it.   Okay. Today is taken care of, tomorrow is planned. Take another deep breath, let it out, and go on with your evening entertainment. You don't even need to think of food or weight until tomorrow morning.   More importantly, you don't need to think about what you weighed this morning again. The scale is closed until next Monday morning. The numbers will change in your favor if you follow through with good choices, just as you've been doing for several months now.   You can do it- you have done it. This is just a small blip on the radar of your life that will soon be forgotten. It is not a blot on your soul.
Llyra

Llyra

3
 

Divertissement

Exactly a year has passed since I first applied the idea of lap band surgery to myself. I don't recall what put it into my head, but when I went to see my doctor for my annual check-up, I asked her casually what she though of bariatric surgery. Dr. Renee favors conservative treatment in most cases, which suits me fine, and I expected her to be lukewarm at best about weight loss surgery. When she promptly answered, "You are a perfect candidate for the surgery and I will fill out any papers you need in order to arrange it," I nearly fell off the examining table.   She went on to tell me the differences between gastric bypass and lapbanding, both available in Casper via three excellent surgeons. She left the final choice up to me, but explained she thought lap banding was the best option since it involved less extensive surgery and had fewer risks. I left her office with a list of surgeons, instructions to call the Wyoming Medical Center Weight Loss Program, and her firm support in whatever decision I made.   RN Deb Miller was in charge of the WMC Weight Loss program at the time and was the advocate that everyone hopes for when entering a life-changing and frightening new endeavor. She explained the program, the paperwork, the procedure, and WMC's policy on borderline cases such as myself. My BMI was not the suggested 40 and I had less than 100 pounds to lose, but I had arthritis, joint pain, GERD, and a family history of DM that strikes people at about age 62 (I am 55). Also weighing in opn the side of approval: my husband works for WMC and the hospital is growing more interested in allowing the surgery in hopes of reducing insurance costs down the line for weight-related co-morbidities.   Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I filled out the first paperwork, crossed my fingers and plunged into the preliminaries.   Insurance required me to meet with the hospital dietician once a month for three months to discuss pre-op and post-op diets. Deb warned me that missing a single meeting with the dietician had been used as grounds to disapprove surgery. I appeared at my appointments faithfully, attended the informational program for perspective clients, read all the literature, checked out the short course online, and met with the surgeon I chose.   The first meeting with Dr. Todd Beckstedt was brief and essentially consisted of "You got any questions?" and "You sure you want to do this? Okay, then." My questions had been answered via my research and it seemed the main purpose of shelling out the money for this visit was in order for his business manager to spell out how much more money I would be shelling out and how payment was arranged.   I was privately dismayed at how long the preliminaries stretched out before the paperwork could even be submitted to the insurance company. I underwent a number of lab tests, medical exams, and psychiatric testing, all of which the insurance agreed to pay for, even if the procedure was ultimately denied. I had hoped to be able to have the surgery in December, but it quickly became obvious that was not going to happened. I resigned myself to the slow turning of the bureacracy.   The psychiatric exam tickled my fancy: was I sane enough to want to lose weight? Was I stable enough to follow through with the program? Did I have the brains God gave a sagebrush? I went for my oral psych exam and several times found myself answering a question with some version of, 'I know the answer you are looking for is A but I really think B because..." When I went back to discuss the results of this exam with the doctor, I asked her if I was psychotic, neurotic or had some other kind of deadly -tic. She answered, "No, but you are unconventional." My, I was happy to have professionally confirmed what my family, friends, business associates, and I have known for many years.   Once the psych exam was done, I turned in my paperwork to Deb and the wait began. It dragged on through January and well into February, a much longer time than it generally takes for surgery to be approved. I decided I was going to be denied because I was twenty pounds too light and began to wonder if I needed to increase my weight to the prerequisite 260 pounds i order to be approved (more even than I had weighed nine and a half months into carrying a ten andf a half pound baby).   When Deb called to tell me the procedure had been approved, I think she was more excited than I was because she is a dear person who cares about all her patients and she had also decided I was about to be denied. I thanked her for the call and faced the next set of hurdles I needed to jump. We set a surgery date of March 3, 2010, I arranged for a couple of days off work for unspecified gastric surgery, and began my two week liquid diet.   I managed to stay on the liquid diet without a great deal of trouble, but I was so sick of sweet gunk like Ensure and Boost by the time I was done that it is hard to look a chocolate liquid in the bottletop to this day.   As I've written before, I recall essentially nothing of the day I went in for surgery or the day or two after- only that ghastly tray of bland, inedible (okay, undrinkable) hospital fare that was presented as my first post-surgical meal. I stayed on liquids a few days, then was given permission to eat whatever I wished as long as I chewed the hell out of it and could keep it down. I had little or no trouble with this first solid food and never has a bite of baked potato tasted so good as that first post-liquid spud.   I actually ended up on a mostly liquid diet for longer than expected since I went to Texas to visit a friend who was recovering from chemotherapy and radiation for throat cancer. He was limited to Ensure-like fare and though he had real food for me, I was certainly not going to eat pork chops while he sat across the table from me sipping one of those ghastly meal substitutes. We drank the nasty stuff companionably for the several days I was there, though I did bring in some grapes and strawberries to supplement my meals.   I didn't lose much weight prior to the pre-op liquid diet and didn't lose much more on the liquid diet. Shoot, I thought for a while I was going to have to gain weight in order to be approved, so why bother? My first fill was posphoned by a couple of weeks due to my trip to Texas and didn't have a lot of effect on me. The second fill was better- hooray! Restriction achieved.   This summer I've gradually adjusted to my new eating habits and requirments. Fortunately foe me, my doctor is less strict than many I've read about in terms of what I can injest and when. Three meals at designated times of the day simply do not work for me; I am a grazer. Food too early in the morning makes me sick; I start feeding myself around eleven o'clock and by late evening, I've got my food in for the day.   I don't count calories, either. I started using the Weight Watchers point system that worked well for me in the past, but the endless task of writing down every ort of food just infuriated me- been there, done that, regained the weight. As much as anything, I want to learn to live like a normal person and not think of food every second of every day. I ask myself "Am I hungry or just bored/sad/irritated/procrastinating/fill in the blank?" If the answer is "hungry", I eat what I want and stop when I'm no longer hungry.   I was thrilled the first time I couldn't finish a restaurant meal and took enough leftovers home in a box to last me another two meals. When I lost my desire for french fries, a life time passion, because they sat in my stomach like bricks, it was the triumph of a lifetime of poor eating. I still struggle with not drinking water with meals, but it doesn't seem to affect either how long I stay full or my weight loss. When it does, I will put more effort into conquering that weakness in my program.   The one bad habit I have not given up is carbonated beverages. I did give them up for several months, then confessed to my doctor how difficult it was and how much I missed diet Pepsi and Perrier water. He asked if I drank "the fully leaded (sugared)" variety and I allowed as how I have drunk only diet soft drinks since Tab came out in the Sixties. "Then what's the problem?" He asked. Well, didn't it stretch the pouch or something? He smiled and said that was more of a problem with gastric bypass than with banding and to drink the carbonated beverages if I wished.   So comforted by my favorite bad habit, I've come almost six months since banding. My weight is down to 203 from a high point of 240. My joints don't protest every move and while leading horses up a steep hill last week, I realized I wasn't the least bit breathless. Things are better, definitely, and I am sitting here in jeans I haven't been able to wear in three years or more.   I don't have a firm final weight loss goal because I tend to slip back into obsessive compulsive anorexic/bulimic thinking when I get centered on a number. My next short term goal is to drop below 200- I'm getting there. The goal after that is to drop below 180. After that- well, we'll see how I feel about the matter. I'm happy with my progress and for now, that is enough.
Llyra

Llyra

1
 

Grand Jete

One of the things that really sucks about having a weight problem is the number of people who feel they have some sort of moral right and/or obligation to make comments on what we put in our mouths or how we conduct our lives. My stock reaction for anyone who has the unmitigated gall to do so: A cold stare and, "Why on earth would you make such a personal remark?"   Too many of us are programmed to apologize for our size, what we eat, how much room we take up in a theater seat. When someone chides us, we bow our heads, acknowledge our inferiority, and promise to do better.   Well, I say the hell with it. Stand up, talk back, learn to be polite but firm, or just tell those people to go to the devil. We're overweight, we aren't childish, stupid, uneducated or in need of constance survellance by society. I am willing to bet most individuals on this forum know more about weight control than ten skinny civilians, so why do we let the uneducated and unexperienced buffalo us with unsolicited comments?   Eleanor Roosevelt said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."   Quit giving consent, hold our heads high, and fight back.
Llyra

Llyra

6
 

Fifth position

I read a number of surgery day stories on the forum before I realized I have no surgery day story of my own. I don't recall checking into the hospital. I don't recall the surgical prepping process. I don't recall waking up. I don't recall going home. I don't recall how I felt in the hospital or when I got home, though I have a half empty bottle of liquid painkiller to indicate it must've hurt enough at some point to take the medicine.   All I recall is looking at a tray of hospital food at some point, none of which looked remotely edible: clear soup made with beef bouillon, orange jello, some kind of awful protein drink. Might've known my single memory would be of food!   My husband says the anesthesia is probably accountable for the memory lapse which was so thorough that I didn't even realize I had a memory lapse. I had to ask him if I actually had the procedure done in the hospital as opposed to the surgical center and whether I stayed on the surgical floor overnight. I don't recall if I came home and went to bed or if I stayed downstairs on the couch or if I took off to the mall to go shopping.   It is extraordinarily disconcerting to have such a sgnificant event totally erased from my memory. I thought talking with my husband would trigger some kind of "oh, yeah" reaction, but it didn't. Huh. The mind is an interesting thing. Makes me wonder what else I have forgotten so thoroughly that it might as well have never happened.
Llyra

Llyra

1
 

Arabesque

My husband and I got back from Sturgis last week (we went pre-madness week to ride the Black Hills with friends). It was my first long trip on my very own bike and not looking at the back of some male's head. I put over 600 miles on my bike, rode through a howling electric storm that dumped inches of rain on us, not to mention more than a hailstone or three, down miles of gravel roads that were furrowed by that rain I mentioned, and up Iron Mountain on pigtail bridges and through narrow tunnels behind bikers much more expert and a hell of a lot faster than I might've been on my own.     It was wonderful.   I'm ready to go again. In the midst of all the gleaming Harleys and a few truly weird ass custom bikes, our good solid rice burners took us everywhere we wanted to go. I have a Yamaha Virago 1100 and my husband has a Honda Shadow 1100. The Virago is such a faithful Harley ripoff that it even comes with its own oil leak located in a seal that would require the engine be removed in order to fix it. I can buy a lot of oil for what the repair would cost, so Veronica and I happily continue to leak our way down the highway, doing our part to contribute to the economy and the well being of American Oil.     My husband's bike developed a problem with the fan and no one could decide exactly what was going on until we got it back home to our local guru of all motorcycles, Legacy Cycles in Casper. Turned out to be a bad fuse. On the slower roads, he had to spend some time cooling the engine, but as long as he could ride at a good clip, he and the bike did fine.     Finding things to eat wasn't quite the trial I thought it would be. I ate basically what everyone else ate, though far less and much more slowly. Nuts were a good source of protein and easy to get down and I even managed most of a taco salad one day. Had a long discussion with a riding friend who has considered banding, but whose insurance company denied her several years ago. In hopes that insurance companies are more enlightened now, she is going to apply again and I wish her luck   Not sure where the next bike trip will take us. I am ready to leave again this weekend, but alas, my husband is on call at work and it would really be too bad of me to make a run back to Sturgis for the final Friday, Saturday and Sunday without him. We are talking about going to Minnesota and Wisconsin this fall before the weather sets in.   I don't care where, really.   I just want to get on the bike, point it in some direction, and ride.
Llyra

Llyra

0
 

Fourth position

8-9-10 and I am down 36 pounds, from a high of 240 to a current 204.   When I first got started with this banding process, it was sobering to realize that I'd have to lose forty pounds just to get down to 200 pounds. Seemed like a long way to go to still be the size of some linebackers on pro football teams.   Even though 36 pounds is a fair amount of weight to lose, I don't feel like it has really begun to show. My clothes are looser and my husband says he can tell a difference, but it is not yet the dramatic change that I yearn for in my heart. I'm still a fat girl, just not as fat as I was. I don't spend a lot of time bemoaning this, but it has crossed my mind as I get nearer to the mental dividing line between 200 and 199.   The next forty pounds will put me at 164, the weight I hovered at all through high school and college; no matter how many times I dropped another twenty pounds, I'd gradually find my weight creeping back up over 160. When I think of the agonies that used to cost me and look of the pictures I thought were so ghastly, I realize that if I had never gone on a diet, never fought my way down below 140 time and time again, I might've stayed right there at 164 for many years. I looked just fine at 164.   What is it that makes me think that one number is better than another, that somehow 143 is far superior to 148 or that 199 is superior to 200? That somehow hitting 175 will magically entitle me to wearing my unitard to teach dance classes instead of hiding out in black pants and a black knit top to teach?   On the other hand, some days I feel so much freer in movement and agility that I actually feel normal sized at 204 until I catch an accidental glimpse of myself in a mirror or picture and realize that to the rest of the world I'm still a lump of too too solid flesh. Once again, I mostly don't dwell on the matter but it is interesting to see how my viewpoint has changed over 45 years of weight-related struggle. At age 27 and 145 pounds, I felt fat and ungainly. At age 55 and 204 pounds, I feel relatively normal and graceful.   From an emotional standpoint, I'm better off now than I was at 27 and I may be better off physically, too. When I think of the strange diets I observed to in order to hold a magical number on the scale, I wonder how I managed to survive my youth without developing some exotic type of malnutrition usually found only in third world countries.   In some ways, my food choices now are as strange as those I made thirty years ago, but now it is due to what I am able to eat and not what I think I should eat. I eat more nuts as a source of protein than I ever did in my life because there is a fair amount of protein in a small amount of food and I can chew them up well enough to keep them down. Every once in a while, but nut intake becomes- well, a bit nutty and I have to remind myself that there is also a fair amount of fat involved here. Sherbert also calls to me louder than it used to, largely because it never bothers my stomach and I can eat it when everything else seems like too big a chore to deal with.   I am a night owl and nights can still be a time when I eat more than I should, partially because that's the way I've always been and partially because it is so hard for me to eat in the morning. The first meal of the day is usually a challenge, as if my stomach has as hard a time waking up as the rest of me does. Forget eggs, forget toast, even oatmeal can be a challenge to choke down and keep down some mornings. Once I'm past that first meal, though, the rest of the day is easier, and if I let myself get carried away, I can eat more than is good for me in short bursts late at night.   Still, it is progress not perfection that matters. I know myself well enough to know if I get into the calorie counting journaling every bite that goes into my mouth routine, sooner or later I will rebel against the regimentation. I am better off nibbling my way through the day than I am with three distinct meals, the earliest of which is usually torture. I've struggled my whole life to learn to eat when I'm hungry and stop when I've had enough, and I've found that eating at 8 am, noon, and 5pm with a small snack at 7:15 pm completely negates any effort on my part to be aware of hunger/satiation.   Know myself should be the title of this day's entry. I am not a poster child for the lapbander's ideal life, but I am gtting where I want to be, slowly but apparently surely. I don't mind when it hurts to eat or when things occasionally foam back up because I have taken too big a bite or haven't chewed well enough. It's all part of an enforced learning process that works much better than any type of willpower I ever employed. Eating is not the pleasure it once was with the exception of a few items, and that helps a great deal. It is hard to eat for emotional comfort when excess results in physical pain. That means I've had to find other ways to deal with emotions, but that's okay, too.   For right now, I am mostly content with my progress and my life style. As time goes on, I will make other enforced adjustments and they will become normal for me. I never thought I'd be able to give up my favorite fast food hamburgers and french fries, but it hurts to eat them now and I realize I don't miss them nearly as much as I thought I would. Life is a series of compromises; what I can eat and what I can't has become just one more thanks to a physical barrier to past eating excesses.   I could not have come this far again without help, and I am grateful I was able to have the banding done. Good insurance made it possible, as did some financial sacrifices in other areas on the part of my whole family. My band is a second trip overseas, the new living room bump out we didn't build, a remodeled kitchen, a new truck. I can't imagine anything I'd rather have more, though, than my life and mobility back, not to mention a decrease in physical pain due to too much weight on my joints. I'm grateful that my husband has supported me the entire way.
Llyra

Llyra

3
 

Second position

Early Wednesday morning and I am still awake as usual. I wake, therefore I write.   I weigh on Monday mornngs and otherwise avoid the scales because it would just make me crazy. This Monday morning I weighed 207. Things are still moving in the right direction.   Last night I gave a reading of my short stories and poetry at a local music and literature event that happens each summer. It's fun- I get feedback on my work and $100 for 45 minutes of reading. A friend of mine took a picture of me last night and showed it to me today. There is less of me than there was, though I still look pretty soft and spongy. I wondered if it is really possible that I shall eventually dig myself out of all this too, too solid flesh and if a thin person might actually emerge in time. It won't be the same person that emerged the last time I lost weight- for one thing I am six years older and even in the normal course of events, certain parts of me would be heading south by now. I'm a bit afraid I might wake up one morning and discover I am a thin person hiding inside a fat person's skin, and I don't have the financial resources to have a lot of excess skin sculpted away.   On the positive side, I don't have a lot of stretch marks to indicate damage and I didn't have a lot of loose skin the last time I lost a significant amount of weight. On the negative side- well, no reason to belabor the batwings or relaxed throat that come with five and a half decades of life even in some of my thin friends. It will be what it will be, and even so will be better than hauling around the equivalent of my fourth grade self on my body. A loss of 33 pounds is just beginning to really show to other people, but I feel much better living inside my body. I move better, dancing is easier, my horse doesn't have such a load to carry, and my jeans need to be replaced pretty soon.   I saw the doc last week as planned and told him that I was still dealing with some issues including carbonated beverages. He asked, "Do you drink the high octane stuff?" I thought he meant caffienated, but he meant sugar. Told him no, I haven't drunk sugared soft drinks since Tab came out about a hundred years ago. He said, "Then what's the problem?" I explained I'd read and been told that the carbonation caused stomach stretching. He smiled and said that was usually more of a problem with the gastric bypass than with banding and not to worry about drinking occasional diet soft drinks. That made me quite happy as I love carbonated drinks, including things like Perrier and lime, and it makes life easier and more pleasant to not have to work to give them up altogether.   DISCLAIMER: I am not suggesting anyone else should or should not imbibe diet soft drinks and I am not particularly interested in discussing the pros and cons of diet soft drinks.   We shall now return to our irregularly scheduled blog.   I have discovered there are some things I can no longer eat and the reality actually bothers me less than the anticipation of having to give them up. Black pepper Trisket crackers don't sit well, with or without Brie cheese. Microwaved chicken breast is a seriously bad idea. Hamburger patties are on the way out of my life, which is just as well since I really liked hamburgers and ate a lot of them before banding. French fries aren't too bad in small amounts, but what good are french fries without hamburgers? Most bread is a problem, though toast seems to be okay. This was one of the biggies for me- man may not live by bread alone, but it was a pretty serious part of my diet. Still, pain and foaming are excellent incentives to give up certain foods, and I find it bothers me less as time goes on.   On the positive side, I can still eat rice and angel hair spaghetti and I am learning to eat fruit so that the fibrous membranes don't trip me up. Cheese and low fat low sugar pineapple sherbert are still edible, though I have to be careful not to eat all my meals in some form of frozen milk and eggs. That'll probably get easier as the weather cools off and as I figure what else I can eat without causing myself problems. One step at a time; I'm not going to freak out because of a chocolate malt every couple of weeks. I am not a person who can eliminate all fats and sugar from my diet; eating an occasional small package of cocoanut M&Ms is not going to set me back, but I also need to not become complacent about the amount of sweets I eat.   Getting enough protein has always been a problem for me and even more so now, but I'm working on it. I've been eating a fair number of almonds because they are easy to chew up and get down.   Well, this has been a remarkably boring entry, but it helps me to line some things out on paper in order to see where I am so I know where to go next. I haven't eliminated all problems from my diet, but the good old LAP-BAND®® keeps me from eating too much of anything. I realized this week that I am stopping when I feel full instead of finishing that last bite of ice cream or the second half of a sandwich. "Clean your plate" was hardwired into my psyche sometime early in life along with the idea if you fail to eat what someone puts in front of you their feelings may be hurt because food=love and affection. For years I've known intellectually this isn't true, but tell that to my inner child. Maybe she's finally getting restructured.   Off to bed. I have several newspaper articles to write tomorrow and need to get up before noon to do the research.   Blessed be.
Llyra

Llyra

0
 

third position

I missed weighing in one Monday because I was out of town, so I weighed after I got home, knowing that I'd eaten alot of salty snacks which invariably cause water retention. Weight went up 1.5 pounds. Weighed again today and was back down 2 pounds. Note to self: salty snacks probably not a good thing in quantity, even if they are protein packed.
Llyra

Llyra

0
 

Second position

Early Wednesday morning and I am still awake as usual. I wake, therefore I write.   I weigh on Monday mornngs and otherwise avoid the scales because it would just make me crazy. This Monday morning I weighed 207. Things are still moving in the right direction.   Last night I gave a reading of my short stories and poetry at a local music and literature event that happens each summer. It's fun- I get feedback on my work and $100 for 45 minutes of reading. A friend of mine took a picture of me last night and showed it to me today. There is less of me than there was, though I still look pretty soft and spongy. I wondered if it is really possible that I shall eventually dig myself out of all this too, too solid flesh and if a thin person might actually emerge in time. It won't be the same person that emerged the last time I lost weight- for one thing I am six years older and even in the normal course of events, certain parts of me would be heading south by now. I'm a bit afraid I might wake up one morning and discover I am a thin person hiding inside a fat person's skin, and I don't have the financial resources to have a lot of excess skin sculpted away.   On the positive side, I don't have a lot of stretch marks to indicate damage and I didn't have a lot of loose skin the last time I lost a significant amount of weight. On the negative side- well, no reason to belabor the batwings or relaxed throat that come with five and a half decades of life even in some of my thin friends. It will be what it will be, and even so will be better than hauling around the equivalent of my fourth grade self on my body. A loss of 33 pounds is just beginning to really show to other people, but I feel much better living inside my body. I move better, dancing is easier, my horse doesn't have such a load to carry, and my jeans need to be replaced pretty soon.   I saw the doc last week as planned and told him that I was still dealing with some issues including carbonated beverages. He asked, "Do you drink the high octane stuff?" I thought he meant caffienated, but he meant sugar. Told him no, I haven't drunk sugared soft drinks since Tab came out about a hundred years ago. He said, "Then what's the problem?" I explained I'd read and been told that the carbonation caused stomach stretching. He smiled and said that was usually more of a problem with the gastric bypass than with banding and not to worry about drinking occasional diet soft drinks. That made me quite happy as I love carbonated drinks, including things like Perrier and lime, and it makes life easier and more pleasant to not have to work to give them up altogether.   DISCLAIMER: I am not suggesting anyone else should or should not imbibe diet soft drinks and I am not particularly interested in discussing the pros and cons of diet soft drinks.   We shall now return to our irregularly scheduled blog.   I have discovered there are some things I can no longer eat and the reality actually bothers me less than the anticipation of having to give them up. Black pepper Trisket crackers don't sit well, with or without Brie cheese. Microwaved chicken breast is a seriously bad idea. Hamburger patties are on the way out of my life, which is just as well since I really liked hamburgers and ate a lot of them before banding. French fries aren't too bad in small amounts, but what good are french fries without hamburgers? Most bread is a problem, though toast seems to be okay. This was one of the biggies for me- man may not live by bread alone, but it was a pretty serious part of my diet. Still, pain and foaming are excellent incentives to give up certain foods, and I find it bothers me less as time goes on.   On the positive side, I can still eat rice and angel hair spaghetti and I am learning to eat fruit so that the fibrous membranes don't trip me up. Cheese and low fat low sugar pineapple sherbert are still edible, though I have to be careful not to eat all my meals in some form of frozen milk and eggs. That'll probably get easier as the weather cools off and as I figure what else I can eat without causing myself problems. One step at a time; I'm not going to freak out because of a chocolate malt every couple of weeks. I am not a person who can eliminate all fats and sugar from my diet; eating an occasional small package of cocoanut M&Ms is not going to set me back, but I also need to not become complacent about the amount of sweets I eat.   Getting enough protein has always been a problem for me and even more so now, but I'm working on it. I've been eating a fair number of almonds because they are easy to chew up and get down.   Well, this has been a remarkably boring entry, but it helps me to line some things out on paper in order to see where I am so I know where to go next. I haven't eliminated all problems from my diet, but the good old LAP-BAND® keeps me from eating too much of anything. I realized this week that I am stopping when I feel full instead of finishing that last bite of ice cream or the second half of a sandwich. "Clean your plate" was hardwired into my psyche sometime early in life along with the idea if you fail to eat what someone puts in front of you their feelings may be hurt because food=love and affection. For years I've known intellectually this isn't true, but tell that to my inner child. Maybe she's finally getting restructured.   Off to bed. I have several newspaper articles to write tomorrow and need to get up before noon to do the research.   Blessed be.
Llyra

Llyra

0
 

First position

It is 2:20 a.m. amd I should be on my way to bed. I would be on my way to bed except I am a confirmed night owl and occasionally an insomniac besides. Reports abound claiming that too little sleep leads to too much bodily padding- I reckon I could be a posterchild for that theory.   I view myself as a lifelong fatty until I look at pictures taken of me in childhood, much of adolescence, and even part of adulthood. If anything, I was a thin child, but my mother's cry of "hold in your stomach!" translated in my ears as "fat." Later on, she used the f word a lot in conjuction with me. If I reached for a cookie after school, she chanted "fat, fat, fat!" Once when she took me to the doctor for an emergency visit due to an inexplicable swelling of my mouth, he told me, "Tall girls are pretty. Fat girls aren't." I was approximately 5'6" tall and weighed about 145 pounds- a real ugly fat girl, for sure. To this day I wonder what it was about the late 1960s and the 1970s that made people believe anyone over a hundred and twenty pounds was fat?   Well, it's a cop out to blame it all on good old mom- heaven knows she had help from television and fashion magazines. By the time I was in fifth grade, I had embraced the horrible truth of my largeness, my hugeness, my all encompassing fatness. I was 5'1" and weighed 103 pounds back then. Occasionally I wonder what my life would've been like had I not developed physically two or three years earlier than my peers. Oh, well, what the heck. That was a long time ago and now is now.   I have always been able to lose weight, though as I passed forty it got harder to recover from the yoyo syndrome. Alas, I couldn't maintain the weight loss for more than a couple of years and sometimes far less than that. I ate too much, I ate the wrong things, I ate because food comforted me through depression, anxiety, anger, sorrow, and any other negative emotion that crossed my path. It's hard to argue with success and food was a very successful comforter. Alas again- the side effects eventually became unmanageable and to make a long story a little shorter, it one day became apparent to me that desperate measures were called for.   I knew if I lost weight, all those pounds would eventually come back and bring friends to stay as well. People may think that is a defeatist attitude, but doing the same thing over and over again in hopes of a different outcome is insane, and I had been repeating this scenario since junior high school. I decided to try to reconcile myself to living the rest of my life buried in more too, too solid flesh than my knees needed to be carrying around. It couldn't be any worse than losing seventy pounds and gaining back eighty over and over again.   I never considered bariatric surgery though I knew several people who had done very well with it and one who had regained the weight lost. Then back in August of 2009, I went to the doctor for my annual check up and asked casually what she thought of bariatric surgery. She promptly replied, "I think you are an excellent candidate for it and I will write any letters and sign any papers you need in order to have it."   Oooo-kay. So I started to consider it seriously. Okay, so I decided I wanted it done ASAP and PDQ as well. But there were interviews to be done, tests to be run, the dietician to see, the psychiatric evaluation to be done. That last totally cracked me up. The world is filled with all sorts of anti-social and/or violent people running loose on the streets and my insurance company spent $600 to make sure I was sane enough to have weight loss surgery. Actually, it was one of the more interesting parts of the preliminaries. A reasonably intelligent person with half a brain and a desperate need to have that surgery no matter what could dissemble with a clear conscience on those tests. Most people are not as oblivious as the Highly Educated Care Providers like to believe. When I did the oral part of the exam, on more than one question I told the doctor, "I know this is the answer you are looking for, but this is what I really think." When I went to see her to review the results, I cheerfully asked if I was psychotic. She answered, "No, but you are unconventional." That was good news, though not completely unexpected, and she passed me for surgery, which was even better news.   I didn't lose as much weight prior to the pre-surgery diet as the Powers That Be would've liked, but the surgery went forward. And I didn't lose as much during the post-surgical period as I would've liked, but a two week trip out of town put my first fill back and post surgery, I could eat whatever I pleased, though I tried to keep it under control. The first fill helped, the second fill was better, and I skipped a third fill for the time being.   My banding was done March 3, 2010 and as of last Monday, I had lost thirty pounds despite not managing to change all my bad habits. I don;t lose every week and that gets me down at times, but thirty pounds is thirty pounds and I'm not going to waste time whining because it isn't forty or fifty pounds.   I've spent a lot of time out of town eating meals that aren't healthy or wise, and I still struggle with sweets, specifically ice cream, which goes down beautifully and doesn't require chewing to mush. Sometimes I get sidetracked while I'm eating and take too big a bite and/or don't chew it properly. Ouch. Carbonated beverages have crept back into my life, though I limit them. I don't know why I drink them, especially if I've had something to eat. It hurts. I never thought of myself as a masochist, but sooner or later I get sloppy and... ouch. Drinking while eating is another struggle, though I don't seem to get hungry any faster when I drink water or tea with meals than when I drink nothing. I can't wait two hours after meals as suggested by the dietician, but maybe I can manage the thirty minutes expounded by some doctors.   Anyway, it's time to make the next solid effort to change a bad habit. If I ever actually manage to get to bed tonight, I have to weigh when I wake up and on Tuesday I go back to see Dr. Beckstedt. I know he's not the enemy who will sit in judgement on me if I haven't lost enough weight, but it does make me a tad nervous, the lingering fear of doctors who told me if I didn't lose at least two pounds a week they'd wash their hands of me and leave me to welter in my disgusting fat alone. I really have to wonder what those guys were thinking: tough love or reluctance to have anything less than outstanding success on their watch. I suspect the latter, but forty-five years of weight watching may have made me cynical.   And so, dear reader, should I actually have one, we arrive at the present where Llyra is 55 years old, weighs 210.5 pounds as of last Monday, and is ready to see what she can do about going down another ten by Labor Day.   Blessings on us all and may we triumph over biology, training, and our desire for chocolate ice cream cones with diet Pepsi chasers.   Llyra
Llyra

Llyra

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