Journaling My Journey

Hope4K · July 24, 2008

7/24 - 10 weeks out, 30.5 pounds down, from 271 to 240.5

Well, I'm truckin' along, and although it SEEMS slow to me, I just realized it actually hasn't been all that slow since I got my first fill. I just looked back at the calendar, and my fill was 2 weeks ago, on 7/10. On 7/10 I weighed 249, and I now weigh 240.5. So, that's a little less than 10 pounds in 2 weeks!! That's actually fantastic!! Wow, all of a sudden I'm counting how many weeks till we go to the beach for our summer vacation, and calculating potentially how far down I COULD be if this restriction holds out!!!!!!! I could be a svelte 210 pounds by then if I play my cards right!

Ahhh!! Can't even let myself hope for that, because I don't want to end up feeling discouraged. I've been telling myself that I'd be happy if I could be somewhere in the 220's by September 6, which is the day we leave for the beach. Haven't seen the 220's in several years. Haven't seen 210 since I met my husband in 1999. Under 200 - haven't seen Onederland since I was in college in the early 90's!! The last time I was able to squeeze into a woman's size 12 was when I was in either 9th or 10th grade, and I was able to wear one specific pair of my mom's jeans. They were a size 12, and I have no idea why she had them, because she has always been a size 8 her entire life. But for whatever reason, she had these jeans that were a size 12, and I BARELY fit into them, but I could button and zip them, and that's all that mattered to me. It made me feel so good about myself for that brief period when I could wear them. Funny how you remember things like that. So, getting into a size 12 again someday is going to feel like a HUGE milestone for me.

Anyway, so since I got this fill 2 weeks ago, I have noticed that I experience what many other bandsters have described on LBT - my restriction seems to fluctuate day by day, sometimes hour by hour. It's weird, there doesn't seem to really be any rhyme or reason to it? Some days I can eat breakfast and lunch, albeit carefully, but with no problems whatsoever. Some days I can hardly get yogurt to go down without a whole lot of gurgling and noise and burping (non-productive) and other fanfare.

On most days, I've found that it's much easier to eat dinner than lunch, and breakfast, forget about it. By the time I get all my pills and vitamins down in the morning, I'm full and don't have any time left for breakfast anyway. That makes me feel guilty, because I know it's bad to skip breakfast, but I really can't help it. Sometimes I'll bring a yogurt along to work with me, and I can eat that at my desk, although it takes a while. Several times I've tried to eat lunch and ended up having to throw it away. I know that SOMETIMES it's because I take too big of a bite right off the bat and don't chew it enough, and then whatever it was gets stuck, and then I'm just done - can't put anything else on top of that bc that will just make it worse (learned THAT the hard way) so I just have to give up and wait till the next meal.

But sometimes even if I'm following all the rules and being very conscious about it, even the smallest most chewed-to-liquid bite won't go down easily at lunch time. It's very strange! Every few days I find dinner is challenging as well, but most days dinner is easier than lunch.

Mind you, I'm measuring my food intake in bites now, not cups. Lord, I never thought I'd say that. I'm amazed at how my sense of portions has changed. I still have food envy when I watch my husband take a gigantic bite out of some big juicy cheeseburger, or gobble down a bunch of crispy crunchy salad vegetables. (never thought I'd say THAT either! LOL)

But when putting food onto my own plate I've gotten very, very good at taking the smallest possible servings of things. And then after I eat, I'm constantly worrying in my head that I've eaten too much, that I'm ABLE to eat too much, that I'll never lose any more weight if I eat this much, etc. And then I remind myself that I only ate, for instance, one tablespoon of mashed potatoes, or something like that.

It's weird how your brain processes this phenomenon. Mostly what I've read on LBT is from people saying that they are still ordering the Extra Large Value size of everything, even though they can only eat a small fraction of it. With me it's been the opposite. I automatically order or plate-up the smallest portion, but then have some sort of dysmorphic thing happen where I panic I've eaten too much.

I think part of the problem is that I never really feel hungry anymore - and I also never really feel full. That is to say, I never get the feeling of full that I got pre-band.....which was a sickening, oh-my-God-all-I-want-to-do-is-unbutton-my-pants-and-lay-on-the-couch sort of feeling. I regularly ate up until I felt that way at dinner time, almost every night. Not so much at lunch, because I had more distractions from food during that time of day, I guess.

I wouldn't say that I MISS that awful stuffed to the gills feeling.....but maybe psychologically I miss having a full belly feeling?? I don't know. And I can't really say that I have ever really recognized true stomach hunger - certainly not pre-band, bc I ate all the time. And not so much post band either. I don't know, maybe I'm just not skilled enough to recognize the feeling yet? So, without being able to discern those specific feelings - hungry vs. full - I think I have a tendency to panic and to STILL think that this surgery is not going to work for me after all (present evidence disregarded) and that I'll end up sabotaging myself, despite my best efforts, as I have always done in the past. I know I've got to work on that.

In my ideal world, I wouldn't have to think about, worry about, panic about, plan endlessly for, or obsess over food a-n-y-m-o-r-e. I dream of a day when I can just live my life - and eat whenever it's appropriate to do so to feed my body. Period. I think I'm on my way. I'm amazed to no longer be compelled to nightly binge sessions in front of the TV. I'm incredulous that leftover cookies or bbq chips from weekend cookouts will stay in my pantry, unmolested for weeks. Pre-band, these foods would have literally called out to me over and over again, every time I was in my house, until I either devoured them, or in a fit of fortitude stoicly dumped them down into the gargage disposal so that they couldn't torture me any more. Now, I FORGET that they are even in there.

Now, that's not to say that I don't still have a weakness for junk food, and believe me, if it's in a basket somewhere at a party, I'm definitely going to eat some of it. But I don't feel like it has a power over me anymore. That is really quite remarkable. This band certainly requires it's share of sacrifices, but so far, I'd say I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat. Thirty pounds, no longer weighing me down, gone forever. Amen!