Jack Fabulous

I had a lot of fantasies about all the different things I was going to do after I lost weight. I was going to be a lot more active, I thought. I was going to buy bicycles for my wife and me, and go bike riding all over town. I was going to take a self-defense class and learn how to finally protect myself. I was going to go on photo safaris all over, and spend hours walking around and taking pictures. I was going to go on hikes in the Shenandoah mountains, and learn kayaking – why, I have no idea. I’ve been trying to get my wife to agree to buy bicycles for some time now. She always said that we couldn’t afford it and that they were too expensive. I agreed with her, but it was really something I wanted. I felt that it was going to help in my recovery from weight loss. I wanted to buy bicycles in spring so that we could go out riding when the weather was cool. She had said no, but just last month she agreed that we should buy bicycles. I called up a good friend of mine who is an avid cyclist, and he met us at the pro bike shop. After spending a few hours of learning about bicycles, we selected two identical his and hers Schwinn comfort bikes. It’s been 90 to 100 degrees here most days, and just too hot to ride. On the few occasions that I have been able to ride my bicycle, I will say, I am woefully out of shape. I find that I can’t ride for more than fifteen minutes at a time, partly because we live on a hilly street, and going up and down the hills takes a lot more energy than riding a stationery bike. So far my attitude has been that my biking stamina will improve the more I do it. I’m just waiting for the weather to get a little bit cooler so I can go out riding. One of the other things I need to do is to start weightlifting. When I was having all those back problems, my physical therapist told me that the issues were partly due to my back muscles not being strong enough to withstand the extra exertion I was putting on them. She told me I needed to strengthen my back muscles. My wife and I have signed up for a weightlifting class that meets once per week. She is encouraging me to go do weight training two to three times per week. I believe the class starts next month, and I’m looking forward to it. I’ve also looked online to find photo safaris all over the country. There are several photo safaris in my area. I signed up to go to one in August. It would be great if I could go to one safari per month to get back into my photography. I’ve really been missing it. This particular safari I signed up for is going to be meeting at a museum, and we’ll be shooting in and around the museum. I asked my wife if she wanted to come along with me, and we could have lunch afterward. She agreed to go with me to the museum, but not to the photo safari. She would spend her time walking around the museum while I shot my pictures. We would meet up at the museum restaurant at a pre-designated time for lunch. One of the reasons why I invited her was because I didn’t want her to feel left out. The entire time that I was at the fire department, she would always complain that I was leaving her to go to the fire department and that I wasn’t spending enough time with her. I would like to make her as much a part of my photography as possible. It won’t be possible all the time, because a lot of these safaris don’t allow you to tag along if you don’t have a camera. I’ll do my best. My wife also found a kayaking class in the LL Bean catalog, and also, a fly fishing class. I’ve always wanted to try fly-fishing. I had signed up for fly-fishing classes a couple of years back while we were on vacation, but unfortunately, I was sick in bed the entire time during that vacation, and was not able to do it. While I haven’t actually done anything yet, it’s exciting to know that I am making plans for an active future. I think last weekend’s excursion to the park was a good first step.

I’ve been talking to my wife about becoming more active now that I’m losing weight. Yesterday, she told me to get a good night’s sleep because she had an activity planned for Sunday. She wanted to keep it a surprise and wouldn’t tell me what the activity was. We had been looking at the county parks catalog so I thought it might be related to us going to a park. She told me that there would be some hiking involved so I should wear comfortable shoes. There was also some mention of a picnic. I asked her if this would be a good opportunity for me to bring my camera since I had really been itching to use it. I have not used it since January. She hesitated about the camera and then said I could bring it but there really wasn’t much to take a picture of. I tried to figure out all weekend long where it is that she might be taking me. Every time I mentioned a park, she would say, “No, that’s not it and I’m not telling you.” I really love it when she takes the initiative to plan an activity because it takes the pressure off me and its just fun to be surprised sometimes. True to her word, this was a local park I had never been to before. In fact, I didn’t even know it existed. We parked and went to the visitor’s center to get a map of the walking trails. We walked down one of the trails for a bit until we got hungry and then walked back to the car and retrieved the picnic basket. We had discussed taking kayaking lessons but I didn't realize it was at this park. We found a shaded picnic table under a tree very close to the river. After eating turkey and cheese sandwiches, pickles, and watermelon, I walked around shooting some pictures. I realized that I had forgotten a lot of what I had learned because the pictures didn’t come out as nice as I would have hoped. Walking the trail The view from the picnic table I have no idea who this woman is. It just seemed like a perfect chance to use my telephoto lens and capture the greens and reds.

Well, if you lose more than you want you can always get butt implants. I hear a certain type of men get them to give them a "rounder" look. LOL

It has been five months since my surgery. I have lost eighty pounds. That’s about sixteen pounds per month, or about four pounds per week. I would say on average, I am very pleased with my progress, even though I’ve had a lot of ups and downs. I’ve had two major stalls, which had more to do with my depression and food addiction than actual physical changes within my body. During those times, I was terrified that I would never be able to lose another pound again – or, even worse – I would gain some weight. Fortunately, I didn’t end up gaining weight, and I feel like I am back on track to losing some more. I still need to incorporate exercise into my everyday routine, but overall, I think I’m doing okay. As I look back over the last five months, I can’t believe how far I’ve come. This much weight loss would never have been possible without the surgery, regardless of how much time I took to try to lose it. I still want to lose another seventy-five to eighty pounds. My doctor would be happy if I just lost another fifty. If I lose another eighty pounds, in the next five months, I’ll be at my goal weight by Christmas. Clearly, the biggest struggle has been the addiction. If it wasn’t for that, I think I would have been able to lose a lot more weight, faster.

Each day you will feel better than you did the day before. Let me know if you have any questions. Here is a link to my blog from the month I got surgery: http://jfabulous43.w...ss.com/2012/02/. It will tell you what I experienced and hopefully let you know what to expect in the coming weeks. Let me know if you have any questions. The only way I got through this in the beginning was by talking to someone who I met online who had already gone through it. He was a real life saver and talked me through all my hard and anxious moments.

I bought all my foods from www.blossomfoods.com. They have 5 oz frozen meals that are puréed. The size is perfect for my stomach. In fact I still use them because they are just so convenient and really help keep me on track. The foods are high in protein and between 100 - 200 calories each.

It has been a while since I last wrote here notwithstanding my most recent post. Somehow, it seems longer than that. I think because overall I have not been blogging very much for the last couple of months. Furthermore, it upsets me to admit that I have not been reading my dear friends. I guess you could accuse me of being a bit self-absorbed and you would be not far from the mark. If my blog is a place I come to document my life, emotions and actions then where can I go to escape my life and my emotions? Yes my friends, I have been on a crusade to escape my reality. In that respect, this entry is no different than the one I posted three weeks ago except to say I fell deeper into my addictions. In last month, I have fallen back into my old addictive behaviors of overeating, making poor food choices, and surfing the Internet. I’ve been staying up past my bedtime on the Internet. Without an adequate amount of sleep, I can’t wake up to exercise. Also, I’m groggy and sleepy for the day so I also tend to eat more and have a very hard time concentrating. The thing that is scary is that my thoughts and rationalizations about my behavior reverted back to the same as they were before surgery. There are times, in fact, that I forget I’ve even had the surgery. This pattern of behavior is quite frustrating. I really wish that I could be at a point where I make good choices because that is the right thing to do. I make healthy choices because I am a healthy person. I wish it was more black and white than it is. For the year before having surgery, I was highly motivated and focused on the goal of having surgery. I did not allow anything to get in the way of me being approved for, and having, the surgery. I had even decided that if I was not approved by the insurance company that I’d take a loan out and do it myself. Once I had the surgery, my goal was to survive the first few months and I lose a significant amount of weight. As I get farther away from the shock and awe of the surgery, I’m settling into a bad routine. Lately, with my old behaviors coming back, it seems that I have lost my direction. I should create a new goal and tell myself not to let anything get in the way of getting to that goal. One good thing about all my self-destructive behavior is that while I haven’t lost any weight, I haven’t gained any either. I haven’t taken any backward steps, but I haven’t moved forward. It’s time to start moving forward again. A lot of my poor eating habits coming back, and my food and Internet addictions rearing their ugly heads, have had to do with all the stress I am under at work. I’ve come to the conclusion that being stressed at work is a perpetual state of affairs, and I need to figure out a better way to deal with it. Adding fuel to this fire has been the fact that my wife was not around for two weeks. She went to California to see her friends and I was left alone and to my own devices. Now that she is back, I’ve tried to straighten up a bit. I’m trying to make better choices. I’ve decided to go back onto my pureed diet. I was able to lose about a pound a day on that. So, time to get back into the swing of things.