CdnExpat

You're headed in the right direction, and the final destination isn't in sight yet. You never know, Scorpion509 - a complete lifestyle change real does change everything. Thankfully. CE

The actual formula for deciding ideal weight (for women) is 100 pounds for the first 5', and 3 pounds for every inch more. To fine tune this number, follow the directions below for measuring your elbow width. (This is more accurate than your wrist, especially if you're overweight). After you've determined frame size, adjust the ideal weight by adding (to the above formula) 1.5 pounds per inch for a medium frame, and 2 pounds per inch for a large frame. Directions: Place arm parallel to the floor, straight out from shoulder, palm up. Bend arm up 90 degrees. Using calipers (or help from someone) measure the distance between the centers of the two prominent bones behind the point of your elbow. Be sure to center on the bones. Using that measurement, compare to the chart below. If your measurement falls within the guidelines listed for your height, you have a medium frame. If it is less, you are small-framed, and if more, you are large framed. Sorry. The chart got all gibbled when I posted it. Here's the link instead... http://www.am-i-fat.com/body_frame_size.html Having said that, like Cheri points out, our bodies sometimes have a "happy weight" that pays no attention whatsoever to our wish for an ideal weight. I've just learned I have a small frame. Something I didn't know. CE

What a nightmare. Every additional factor complicates the recovery, and you have had quite the run of unexpected issues. It was good to read the update, that you've lost weight. That's got to be a bit of encouragement. I wanted to say that everyone is different in how we respond to the "insult" of surgery, and in your case, the complications from surgery itself are not to be taken lightly. But in the overall scheme of things, you're going in the right direction, and that's all that matters. Research in reputable, peer reviewed journals (not just anecdotal/experiential postings on the internet) suggest that it takes 4 - 6 weeks for the swelling and trauma from surgery to completely disappear. In that time, depending on the former eating habits of the individual, the body may compensate for the sudden lack of food by becoming super efficient - squeezing the life out of every single calorie and hanging on to the fat stores. This equals weight gain and/or no net weight loss in the early days. This is not everyone's experience, but it isn't uncommon. The average healthy sustainable weight loss is 8-10 pounds/month. Again, individually this varies, but this is considered the optimum. If you lose more, great. If you lose less, the average over time generally works out to... you guessed it, 8 - 10 pounds per month. And lastly, those individuals who do not keep a scale at home do better overall both physically and emotionally than those who weigh daily/weekly. One study found that individuals who had a regular monthly weigh in with an objective source had better levels of emotional and psychological health than those who kept scales at home. And, those who kept scales at home had a harder time breaking emotional eating habits because their moods rose/fell depending on what the scale said. They experienced more mood instability, which is a common trigger for emotional eating. As a former "weigh everyday" person, I can tell you personally that getting rid of the scale at home was the hardest and the best thing I ever did. Now, I don't think about my weight like that at all. I go to the doctor for my monthly check up, weigh in, and see whether my guess (of total pounds lost) is close. I usually aim for 5 - 8 pounds, and so far, every weigh in has been at least that if not more. Keep at it Sarabee323 - as long as you're headed in the right direction, the time it takes to get there is irrelevant. It will certainly take less time to lose the weight than how long you have lived with it. This is a good thing. Be encouraged - it gets better. CE

The aliens are more afraid of you than vice versa. Maybe it would help to re-watch Monsters, Inc. I know it seems like an animated cartoon, but the truth comes in the strangest forms.

First, congratulations! The emotional roller coaster you've been on has to be pretty spectacular, so congratulations on still being coherent. If I were you, I'd get myself to a high-risk obstetrician asap. The fact of having signed something is now secondary to reality. All sorts of factors are in play here, and the best thing you can do for your peace of mind is confirm the pregnancy, be upfront with whomever you see, and find someone in your area with a specialty in chronic pain, weaning off pain meds and still having a life. In the meantime, between now and all those appointments sure to happen, bask in the happiness of the possibilities without worrying about catastrophes. You can only do what you can do. The rest is out of your hands. Happy for you, CE

We used a dehydrator that my husband built, for years. (HWHN* is a handy kinda guy) He took an old lingerie cabinet, took out the drawers, used the drawer size as a guide and made frames with stiff mesh screening. (The screen door mesh is too flimsy, and the steel grid is too heavy... something in between). He put an in-car heater in the bottom of the cabinet, ran the cord through a hole he drilled, and voile. We dried everything. Some things weren't as successful as others, but we perfected cherries, grapes, plums, apricots, apples, bananas, peaches, tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, homemade fruit leather, homemade Jerky, and many different kinds of herbs. At a time when our daughter could not eat anything with chemicals in it, we figured out how to eat well all year round. The fruit and veggies don't look the same as the ones you buy in the store because we didn't spray them with a preservative to make them look "nice" but after the first taste, you don't care what the fruit looks like. It's awesome. My girls grew up thinking dried apple rings were the best snack in the whole world. CE *HWHN = He Who Hates to be Named, my very quiet and introvert husband.

Congratulations!!! :wub: That's got to feel soooooooo good. Optimum health is just around the corner, Katiepot. What a marvelous milestone... incentive to keep going. You rock! CE

Why is there a green number on my profile, and on others' profiles? Some are high, some are low, and there's a rating underneath... "neutral," "good," "excellent." I've tried to figure out, and find out, what this means but no joy. Anyone?

Is there no way to alert a moderator immediately when the forums are being spammed? 'joy789' has now sent the same message to all the forums in the space of about six minutes. Who (and how) do we notify someone?

Two books that could help a lot are: "Emotional Incest" by Dr. Patricia Love (about what happens to the siblings in a family with a 'golden child') and "Healing Rejection and Emotional Abuse" by Jonas Clark. Both are available as Kindle books (or Kindle app for iPad). There's also "Severing the Connection: An Instruction Manual of Escaping Emotional Abuse" by Melanie Mayer. Here in the Middle East, your situation is common, but there are ways to learn to deal with your mother's emotional & psychological abuse that do not include going against cultural expectations. Lastly, remember that the abuse is not about you - mom targets you as the scapegoat, but the issues are hers, and hers, alone. Hang in there. Maybe take some strategy tips from Dad... =) CE

I'm envious! My brother has gone a couple of times, but I've never made it. I hope you have an incredibly enjoyable time basking in the happiness of your new shape, the new size t-shirts, and All.Those.Bikes. CE

Thanks, Lissa and Izuri! I use writing as a form of processing, and pretty much what you read is what you get in person. I'm working on my iPad and I couldn't get the comments to work under the original blog entry, so you get one of your own. I do blog; you can find me at www.astonmartinsandcatspit.blogspot.com. There, I'm "DaisyMae." For a picture of what it's like to live here, start with the old entries first. As to the book, I'm saving that for after I leave SandyTown, because a lot of what I write will be about the human rights abuses. The authorities tend to frown on this so I'll do it from outside the country. CE =)

I am a closet fan of wigs. Hats, too. Those groovy little Fascinators that all the hoity-toity chic people are wearing are gorgeous and I aim to have one. Of course, I don't want to have just any old Fascinator. I want to buy it in London, myself, so I'll just have to wait until I go there. Hopefully in the fall. In the meantime, my hair is falling out. I was hoping this wouldn't happen, but clearly "hoping" and "reality" are not necessarily acquainted. Damn. (I'm experimenting with swears. On my last post, a tiny little swear was neatly replaced with stars. Checking to see if it happens again ) I have no magic wand, or as Lily Tomlin says in The Kid, "I left my magic bra and panties at home." (If you've never seen The Kid, you might want to rectify that oversight forthwith). So. No Fairy Godmother, no magic wand, no superpowers, and no reprieve. What to do? Growing up on a farm in Northern Canada, I and my siblings were always pretending to be someone we thought far more glamorous or exciting than we happened to be. Since we didn't' have a TV, all of our pretensions to greatness came out of the books my mother read to us. Thus any given play day could include incarnations of Long John Silver, Anne of Green Gables, or Alec from The Black Stallion. My smallest brother generally ran around after the rest of us furiously demanding that we "wait up," and quite unable to manage staying in character with such short legs. This was not the best part. That was always the dress up box. One could not be Athos, Aramis, or Porthos in chore clothes. Most certainly not. And only D'Artagnan could wear the straw hat skewered with a chicken feather that magically transformed whoever grabbed it into the greatest of all the Musketeers. In this box were three wigs. I'm not quite sure of the provenance of these treasures, but I never saw any fleas or nits, so I'm assuming they were donated by good families - probably my mother's long-suffering friends who did not live in the rural wilds and so had no clue as to why she (my mother) could be so very strange, wanting their cast off hair pieces. The wigs were perfect. Suddenly, any one of us could be someone completely different without straining the collective imaginations of our siblings. My rather handsome brother gave a speech once (he stole it from Sir Winston Churchill) wearing his idea of an English gentleman's proper attire and a scruffy brown wig. He was so good (and funny) that we didn't have the heart to tell him that Sir Winston was bulldog ugly and bald. (This all occurred after mom read us a book about WWII which included the British Prime Minister. When years later, my brother finally saw a picture of Sir Winston, he laughed so hard he couldn't tell us why he was laughing.) Back to the wigs. I've always had long hair. Sometimes really long hair, so the wigs would never fit quite right. My cruel and ruthless siblings would inform me that all that hair, piled up under the wig caused me to look deformed in ways which "...make you look retarded." Whereupon one or another of them would demand that I give the wig up and choose some other way of getting myself into character for the forthcoming play. I usually did this without a fight because I did not like the idea of having a lumpy head - no matter what the reason. Those three wigs eventually disintegrated, and by then, we were all way past the stage of dressing up to amuse ourselves on a Saturday morning. I find myself contemplating the wigs in the windows in the 'Hairdressers' Souq' as HWHN* calls it. These are all little stores in the same area which sell all the same things. Everything one could possibly need for a hairdressing salon. In Canada, you'd have to have a trade license to buy most of this stuff, but not here. These wigs are typical of this region. Flamboyant, long, and thick. Currently, my own hair is very short, mostly gray, and getting thinner by the day. I expect that shortly, I may be drooling outside the windows as I gaze at those wigs. But... I am remembering how I always had to give up the wigs from the dress up box, and I have decided that if it comes to that, I am going to have the blonde wig, the brown highlighted wig, and the black wig. I have no hair to make my head lumpy, and I think even all these years later, if I put on a wig, I'm going to be somebody else for awhile. Given my weight loss, and the latest book that I read, I think I might become Amanda from The Bone Collector. Of course, to be truly authentic, the wig will have to be red and curly ...but I could live with that. Here's to great moms, awesome siblings, good books, and endless imagination. Maybe losing my hair won't be so bad. CE *HWHN = He Who Hates to be Named; my wonderful, introvert husband.

Two things come to mind as I read, J. Fabulous. We have an almost infinite capacity for self-deception, and an equal or greater capacity to change. Thank God. The second thing is that your weight loss (in so far as your personal journey is concerned) IS private but the observable evidence of the changes you are making can't be hidden. In no universe I know of is an apology required. And all that "gushing?" People are happy for you, stunned at the changes you've made, and trying to express that. Obviously, they cared enough about you in the past to be happy for you in the present. Just say, "Thank you." Bask in the happiness for a bit, and then get on with your life. Compliments and criticism are like perfume and s**t - both smell and you don't eat either one. Congratulations on your weight loss, your journey to better health, and the whole new future you have. You so rock. CE

When Alex suggested members take a three day challenge by tracking every little thing they eat or drink, I thought, "Sure. Why not?" I figured that I'd just be writing down what I was tracking in my head, so no big deal, and I could not only say I read the <i>whole</i> newsletter, but I actually took action. So I attached a sharpened pencil to my daytimer and commenced to keep track of everything I put in my mouth. As I looked over my lists last night, I admit I was very close to tears. I would say that the past three days have been pretty typical for me - nothing really out of the ordinary that I could say messed up or changed my regular habits. So no excuse there. I cringe to write this. Over three days, I drank a <i>total</i> of 102 ounces of liquid, consumed +/- 950 calories, and had ZERO protein. I hope y'all were sitting down for this. I swooned myself. How could I, by any stretch of the imagination, call this healthy eating? Ick. Alex's challenge (and the outcome) brought to mind an experience I had working with a nutritionist for the benefit of a mutual client. One day while we were discussing ways in which to re-connect this starving girl to reality, the nutritionist said, "I've found that anyone who has problems with food has an almost infinite capacity for self-deception." Ouch. I'm certainly confronted with my capacity for self-deception. How did I ever morph the reality of that list into something different in my head? I was pretty confident I was keeping track... accurately. Of course, I filed away the decision to "...have more protein tomorrow" in the back my mind. Under a pile of other **** and covered with a mental wet-wool-blanket. Seeing in writing that I'd done that for three days in a row kind of puts my stated commitment to "get healthy" in jeopardy. And, as I am wont to tell my clients, "When the words and the actions don't match, you always go with the actions. They tell the truth." Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. So, this morning, HWHN and I had a long discussion about what it really means to change our lifestyle. As it happens, he's just had his first complete physical in five years (I see all the women roll their eyes and the men shrug) and it turns out he's great except he's pushing the envelope for cholesterol. Ah. This requires a lifestyle change for him too. No more chocolate (he's the chocoholic) and no more cheeseburgers stuffed with deep-fried onion rings. (Fortunately, HWHN is not overweight, but apparently his arteries are protesting.) The 'lifestyle change' discussion precipitated a general discussion about our life, and we've decided to make some other changes as well. We've done this before, he and I - we know we can do it again. Changing our lives the first time meant I beat off the MS and got out of a wheelchair, and "flipping over the Monopoly board" again brought us out of the cold of the Great White Up to SandyTown and changed the course of HWHN's genetically-inherited arthritis. We can do this again. So an "epic fail" has caused us to take stock of what we're actually doing. Not just what we <i>think</i> we're doing. No. Really doing. And we're not doing so hot on the whole self-care thing. But, that's about to change. It's already begun. HWHN wants to avoid having to take Lipitor with all its attendant side-effects, and I'd like to get out of starvation mode, continue losing weight and keep at least a little bit of hair. Here's to Alex - thanks for the newsletter, the challenge, and the opportunity to really confront the self-deception that "...doth so easily beset us all."

P.S. Congratulations! Think on that glorious sentence for a little bit... Whoo hoo. The other nice pick-me-up this week was giving away all my bigger-than-size-14 clothes to the local women's shelter. Way to rock those skinny yoga pants.

I was thinking this yesterday. I currently have what feels like a very limited repertoire of food and I'm thoroughly sick of it. I don't necessarily crave anything in particular, I just think, "Chicken, again. Ugh." My husband and I are slowly getting back to being able to go out (he orders and I nibble) but it's so different than the Foodie life we had before. I like good food and right now it feels like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel. (I am seriously whining here ) The difference between what I am supposed to be eating and what my stomach can handle is still huge, and I'm not getting enough calories. I'm sure I'm stalled because my body has gone into starvation mode, but like you, I'm exhausted by food, and not at all inclined to be hungry. Argh!!! Exercise this morning helped, and I just found a lovely little app called SoFit that I'm going to try. I am determined to change everything about the way I live, but sometimes, I really just yearn for the mindlessness of life before the sleeve. Mind you, I'm so much happier with myself in this new life, that I truly don't want that old life back. Except maybe for five minutes while I eat something delicious. Hope you enjoyed your walk. I'm off to get a yoghurt my ownself. CE

If you have difficulty with a hard, dry "plug" because of the constipation, glycerine suppositories and a lubricating jelly (e.g. KY jelly) help prevent serious straining, minimize pain and prevent tearing. After that, lots of liquids and Miralax close to hand should make it better. CE

Actually, it seems that congratulations are in order. You asked a friend to help, he said 'Yes,' but his behaviour raised red flags so you asked someone else for what you needed. Great self-advocacy, actually. And putting it down to cynicism or pessimism actually dismisses the people skills you have developed. You rock. It's not about only relying on yourself... that's not always healthy either. It's about recognizing the discrepancy between what someone says and their actions... you always go with the actions. Instead of guilting your (former?) friend into keeping his word (what fun that would have been!) or having a pity party and deciding you're going to "do it myself!" you reached out to someone else. I'm sorry your friend wasn't as reliable as you wish, but you solved the problem in advance. Ta da! For the nerves, do a little strategic catastrophizing, and then contingency planning. Think about the absolute worst case outcome for the PAT, and then decide what you'll do about it if that outcome happens. Make real plans. "If the PAT finds that I'm not in my right mind and can't competently make this decision, what will I do?" Make a list. Then go on to the next worst case scenario. Do that until you've covered all the possibilities. Then put the list in a safe place and willfully, mindfully, refuse to think about outcomes. You've got it covered. And keep yourself busy. These will be the longest three days of your entire life if you're doing nothing. Hang in there! You're almost there. CE

"Attitude is the mind's paintbrush. It colors everything we do." Good for you, NuManMitch! Pain always impacts our ability to be cheerful, thankful, or count any blessings, and it's just plain exhausting. Giving yourself a mental pickup obviously helped, and it sounds like you're on your way to better days. You've already discovered "normal" is the key. Something that might be helpful - find some positive statements that you can post around the house, write on your forehead, or the back of your hand, and mentally make yourself take in what they mean. I have used the one above for years, having originally had it in my classroom while working with juvenile offenders. It was true then, it's true now, and I often have that little phrase come to mind when I'm feeling pissy, or blue, or depressed, or angry. It's gotten to the point where in our family we sometimes say to each other, "Your paintbrush has been dipped in something ugly." It's a good reminder. It gets better and better from here... especially as those numbers drop. CE

Oh. Look at that. My little swear got starred.

But "Square One" now has an outraged, not-putting-up-with-this-**** woman in it. Good for you. What a dweeb. If there's nobody else available, I got some great workout routines off of http://www.workoutbox.com/workouts/ and http://www.freetrainers.com/ CE

Nope. No serious complications for me other than the major case of heebie jeebies I gave myself by obsessing over the "what ifs." Realistically, the benefits outweigh the risks (pun intended) and the anxiety is paralyzing. If you're going to project yourself into the future, make it positive. Plan what you'll do with those boys of yours when you can keep up with them because you're fit and healthy. Think about vacations and bikinis; little black dresses and romantic dates. As an RN, you certainly can do a risk assessment. Put the numbers down in black & white, and then make your "What ifs" shrink in proportion. It's all in your head... which you control, so squish the catastrophes and maximize the rewards. (And keep busy. You still have two weeks to wait) CE

Some people will lose no more than the regular amount of hair (normal growth/regrowth cycles) and some will lose a lot of hair. It depends on how the individual's body handles the "insult" of surgery and the wls. Keeping up the Protein helps with the regrowth cycle, but does not prevent hair loss. For those of you who didn't lose much hair, say a small 'hallelujah' and observe a moment of silence for those of us who have. There's great suggestions in one of the other forums on hair loss, and some will work and some won't. Again, depends on the individual. Fortunately, research so far supports that nobody goes bald (with the VSG) and the loss is temporary. I decided I don't care, I'd rather be skinny. So I'll either shave my head a la Demi Moore, or wear a wig a la Dolly Parton if it gets too bad. In the meantime, I've gone and gotten a pixie cut (veeerrrry chic for a 49 year old I can tell you) and I'm reveling in the no muss no fuss hair days after years of long (and sometimes very long) hair. The thing that seems to be helping me is the silicon supplement. As a side effect, my fingernails are looking pretty amazing too. Just in case, I'm eyeing up the long blonde wig in the window at the mall. HWHN* says it looks way more like Rod Stewart than Dolly Parton. But what would he know? He thinks Dolly is a test-tube sheep. CE *HWHN = "He Who Hates to be Named" aka my quiet, introverted husband.

Who is Lisa Lampanelli?