It's been almost four weeks since my surgery, and I've noticed my weight loss has been pretty steady at a pound every other day. That's four pounds a week! Oh, how I wish it could stay that way until I reach my goal!
I bought an exercise bike last week and I've been riding it just about every day. It's from the Livestrong line of exercise equipment, and it is really sweet. It keeps track of everything, has lots of different workout programs, lets you upload your workout to livestrong.com, and the ride is very smooth. I'm sure it will become a chore at some point, but for now I'm enjoying it. It's a nice feeling to be able to exercise without feeling like I'm going to die right on the spot. If this small amount of weight loss is already making such a difference in my activity level, I can't wait to see what I'm like when I reach goal!
The next big step for me is in a couple of days when I get to start adding slightly more solid foods to my diet. I love Italian food, so the first thing I'm going to have is a meatball with a bit of marinara sauce. Well, maybe HALF a meatball. I probably can't eat a whole one yet in one sitting.
It's been a little over three weeks since my weight loss surgery and I'm finally starting to feel like I've lost some weight. I've lost 13 pounds since surgery, which isn't fantastic, but it's pretty good. The two weeks prior to surgery, being on nothing but a mostly liquid protein diet, I lost 12 pounds. So in just a little over a month, I'm down 25 pounds. Not a bad start!
It's so hard to keep a positive outlook, though, when one has so MUCH weight to lose. I find myself starting to feel great about what I've accomplished so far, then I inadvertently see my silhouette in a store window, and see just how fat I still am! There's a tendency to think "What's the use? I'll never be able to do it." But this is different from a diet, I tell myself. I have help this time. So I try to put blinders on and forge ahead.
I'm finally at the stage where I'm able to start adding more foods to my diet, as long as they are soft and not chunky. I've been tracking my calories almost since the day I got out of the hospital. Since I'm adding foods with a little more substance to them now, my daily caloric intake is increasing and for the first time since surgery, I hit 600 calories. I freaked at first! "Oh no! I'm eating too much!" I had to have a little reality check about not going overboard (like I have a tendency to do). I just hope the fairly rapid weight loss doesn't stop as I continue to increase my calories to a reasonable amount.
One thing I'm really hoping is that as I get used to my smaller stomach and my new diet, my mind will turn to something other than food and weight loss. These topics seem to take up about all of my waking thoughts and it gets tiring. This is what I've found with diets in the past, too. I'm hoping since this is a forced lifestyle change, more so than a diet, that eventually eating the right things, in the right amounts, will become second nature, and I will quit thinking about it.
Well, that's enough rambling for now. I've got so many thoughts and feelings running through my head right now, I thought I'd start a blog.