salsa1877

I workout at least 5 days a week. 30 minutes of intense cardio 5x/week and weights 3x/week. I attritubute much of my success to exercise!

I have a question for you ladies that have already had PS consults! What questions did you ask??? I went into the lap-band surgery consult with zero questions, but I don't think I want to do this with my TT. I would just use the first consult as a guide for what questions to ask, but I am only having ONE CONSULT. If I don't like this guy I have to back out until I can find another way to finance it. So I want to make sure that I have all my ducks in a row when I go in on Friday.

Alright since I got almost instant answers yesterday (great for those of us in the instant gratification generation) I thought I would post this question here. What questions did you ask your plastic surgeon when you went in for the consult? A little background about me. I decided to have my lap-band on July 7, 2007, had my consult on August 8, 2007 and my surgery less than 24 hours later. It was such a whirlwind that I didn't even think about questions to ask in that consultation so I went in just basically with the knowledge I gathered from this site. Pretty good info here! But I don't know that I want to go into this surgery blind. The recovery time appears to be much worse than for lap-band. So I was wondering what you think are the most important questions to ask? Thanks in advance. Karri

Alright so I only did a half hour tonight, but this was the most monumental half hour of exercise ever. It wasn't hard, it wasn't exhausting, I just did it. Wed are always hard for me for some reason and today was no exception. I forgot my gym clothes at home so I didn't go right after school and that is usually the death of my workout. Today was no exception. Well I got home, fixed and ate dinner, and the calculated my calories and realized I hadn't gotten enough. So I though I would make some fruit and granola dessert that I like...well I ran out of granola. So what did I do...I went to the store and got some. No big deal you say?!?! I RAN TO THE STORE. That is right instead of grabbing my car keys, I grabbed my tennis shoes and put on my gym clothes and ran to the store, got my granola, and ran home. The whole thing took just over 1/2 hour. The grocery store is about a mile away so I didn't do too shabby. Like I said, it wasn't a stellar workout but if someone had told me 8 months ago to run to the store to get granola, I would have laughed at them, got in the car, drove to dairy queen, bought a large cookie dough ice cream with extra cookie dough, and devoured the entire thing in minutes. But now... RUNNING TO THE STORE...FRUIT AND GRANOLA. Miracles really can happen!

Congratulations that is a HUGE accomplishment. :huh2:

Kari - No one minds at all. In fact it is on the list of questions I am asking the doc. I am an organ donor and everyone knows it. That was one of the best things that my mom did in the world was become an organ donor. We got a letter in the mail about 2 months after she died detailing where all of her organs went. Unfortunately because she had so many illnesses she wasn't able to do much, but she did help save or improve the lives of 12 people. Phyl - We have a wii and I love it. OUr apt is kind of small so it is hard to play but my dad gave us the sonic vs. mario olympics and I work up a sweat every time I play it. It DEFINETLY is exercise. Janet- My back hurts because all the excess skin is pulling it out of alignment. That was the main reason my doc was insistant that I have it done. If I don't wear my "sucker-inner" spanx type undergarments I can hardly move at the end of the day. In a way, right now, I have more aches and pains from losing weight than I did before I started. But I am not complaining! I will take the back pain cause I know it isn't for very long. So here is my NSV for the day. I did NOT want to exercise. Wed are always hard for me and I truly was going to skip it, but I didn't get enough calories for the day and ran out of granola for my little desert. So instead of getting in the car and DRIVING to the store, I put on my tennis shoes and gym clothes and I ran to the store, bought the granola, and ran back. You tell me where in the hell I got the idea to do that. I will tell you that 8 months ago I would have looked at you and laughed, grabbed the car keys, went to Dairy Queen and wolfed down a large cookie dough ice cream blizzard with extra cookie dough! Now...RUNNING to the store... GRANOLA and FRUIT. Yep miracles can happen. Well I am going to bed EARLY tonight. Night all

Thanks, for the compliment. It took me almost my entire prep period to type it but in needed to be said. I too am getting my belly whacked off this summer. I go for my consult in 2 DAYS! So excited! Maybe my back will stop hurting!

I am just starting into the maintenance phase and my doc had me start it early because he and the nutritionist said that it can take 10 or so pounds before your body knows when to adjust. I like you am tighter that I would like to be, but still looser than you are (I am gathering that from other posts that you have written). I am really just trying to get in as balanced of meals as I can. I went to my nut and she gave me the foods I should be eating at every meal. If you would like a copy of that, PM me and i will give you what she gave me. I am supposed to be getting to 1500 calories a day, but I struggle to get to 1300 because I don't want to add in crap foods. She thinks 1500 is going to be too low for me because I have lost so quickly and I was obviously in a major calorie deficiency (which is what you want when you lose weight, but not when you want to STOP losing weight!)

So I wrote this post on the August board that I post on too, and I thought I would share it here. Most of us seem to be doing alright with the little food demons, but I figured that it never hurts to get a little tough love message every once in a while. Besides, I know that we get a lot of visitors here and if anyone can make it through this entire post they might get some very valuable information. This was posted to a specific response, and I tried to edit out the details but some if it might seem really specific and it is, because it was addressing a particular episode. But I think you will get a good understanding anyways. Okay...here goes the tough love. And this will be a long post! Nope the brownies were not a good choice, but you ate them and now you need to move on and NOT do it again. You can't change what you have done but you can make better choices in the future. So the question is HOW IN THE WORLD DO I DO THAT? Well I will tell you that the answer is NOT going to come to you when you have a "brownie" (will now stand for anything that is not healthy for us for the remainder of this conversation) staring at you in the face. You have to have the tools and the mindset BEFORE that temptation ever comes up. We have to be ready to turn around at any particular moment and have a piece of brownie shoved in our face and realize that we are stronger than the calories, fat, sugar and peice of inanimate object that we are looking at. It gets harder as we have lost the weight and become a little more comfortable with our bodies. At first we were hell bent on getting losing, losing, losing. Well the newness has worn off and now we are just stuck with the realization that we will always have to fight the "brownies". Alright I am all about being practical so here are some suggestions that I have. 1. Take a piece of paper (one that you can fold up into your wallet/purse/pocket ) and divide it into sections. You may have to write down everything and then rewrite it to get it to all fit. a. Write down all the reasons that you had MAJOR, LIFE THREATENING SURGERY. Not the reasons that you wanted to just lose weight, but what caused you to make this drastic change in your life. b. Write down where you think you would be health wise in 10 years. What disesases, illness would you have? What meds would you be on. Look at your family for "inspiration". For me my mom died at 53 weighing 350+ pounds and had heart disease, diabetes, sleep apnea and a whole host of other disorders. Within 10 years, I was going to be there. c. Write down why you are more powerful than a brownie (this one is tough!) d. Find some typical foods that you would love to eat (your brownies) and look up the calories and then find out how much time you would have to spend working them off in the gym. e. Write down what about you makes you important enough to overcome your demons. f. Now you are going to want to fit all of this on a piece of paper in bullet form so when you are faced with you brownies you can look at it and allow you to mentally fight the war that has just come up. If you can justify eating that brownie after looking at your paper, then eat it, but have no regrets, and do not dwell on it. Instead you have faced the problem UP FRONT and not looked back on it. 2. Another possible tactic. I know that you are having a tough time getting your calories down. One thing that I have found that helps me is by eating the same foods that I like but with some simple substitutions and by finding ways to remove some unneccessary ingredients. For example. I make this dessert that had 1/2 cup of frozen berries, 2 TBSP of Cream cheese and 1/2 cup of granola. The cream cheese had 60 calories and I thought..."I wonder how this would taste if I didn't put the cream cheese in it". I tried it and guess what, I couldn't even tell that it was missing. Same thing with meatloaf. Instead of eating it with ground beef now I substitute grond chicken. As long as I keep all of my veggies and other healthy fillers in, I can't tell the difference. I really learned this from Subway. I found that if I went in and ordered a foot long sandwich (obviously pre-band) and got all this deli meat and cheese and then pilled it with my favorite veggies that I all I could really taste were the veggies anyways. So first I got rid of the meat and then the cheese, and the taste of the sandwich hardly varied at all. This is what I do all the time now. I will always fix something first and then think what can I do to lower or eliminate the calories without harming the integretity of the dish. 3. This is the one that everyone is going to hate. WE JUST HAVE TO HAVE WILL POWER SOMETIMES. Yep the age ol' dieting nightmare. Our will power will not always be perfect, but we have to be able to stand up to ourselves and tell ourselves no. Before this surgery I couldn't tell anyone NO, including myself. So when my stupid head told me that I needed to go to Carl's Jr and get 2 big hamburgers and eat them in the 4 minutes it took me to get home so that I could look famished for dinner that was going to be served in 30 minutes...I never said no. NOW, I am comfortable saying no. It has helped me professionally, personally, and mentally. I thought that everyone would hate me if I said no, but now they no longer just expect things out of me. And I don't just give in to all of my brain's wishes. That is making me a better person. 4. Talk about your surgery. I have to honestly say that one of the greatest factors to my success is the fact that I have been open and honest about the surgery. I don't care what other people think about me. Go to 1A of this email and that should show you why there is nothing to be ashamed of. The more you talk about the struggles and successes of your surgery the less likely people are to shove food at you. We have one lady in our science department that brings in treats every week. After the 2nd week of school I told her about my surgery and not ONCE has she come in and offered me the food. She told me, if you ever want it, you may have some, but I don't want to push something on you that you obviously don't want. Yesterday at the staff meeting, the administration gave little food baskets to everyone for all there hard work during scheduling. However instead of a food basket I got a nice card signed by all the administrators, because the know that a food basket is pointless to me. I don't feel singled out, I feel very blessed that these people care enough about me to know what I need. Some people can't make these connections on their own and they need you to school them. You need to POINT BLANK tell your family member/friend, I love to visit you but for me, I CAN'T have this food here. Tell them that they are really putting a barrier between the two of you if they are constantly is serving you this food. Iknow this is tough, but I had to do it with my dad, my BF, and my brother. I asked them if they would offer a beer to a recovering alcholoic. All of them said no, and then I said then why in the hell would you offer me a cookie! Wow I knew this would be long, but I had no idea how long. If there is any advice in here you don't like. Think about why you don't like it. Is it because it is hard...well guess what CHANGING is hard, but maybe just try part of it. If you don't like it because it goes against all of your moral beliefs, then ignore it. I will never know and it will not hurt my feelings. Even if you came back and said "Salsa you are full of crap and are an idiot" I would think " her loss!" and keep on lovin' ya. This is what friends are for. We have to be here during the good times and the bad. We have to be able to look (or type) at the other person and say "stop being an idiot" If we don't do that as friends, really we are no better than an enemy. Good luck.

Steph - I think that you are making a wise decision. Coming from a fellow teacher (whose kids do get tested!) I know the stress that just comes from the job. You have little ones at home that need YOU. Your students just need a math teacher. I know that sounds really hard, but almost anyone with a math license can do your job at school, only YOU can do the job at home. I knew that no matter what career I was in, it would be the major focus of my life so that was a leading factor in my decision to not have the little rugrats. Besides, I really don't like little kids. I am sure yours are great! Having dated someone that is bipolar it is important that they have a good family structure and being there for him will be important for both you and your son. If you are feeling torn between home and work, you are not being the best at either. Good job on the 170s. Linda - When my best friend got pg right after high school we didn't know what it was going to be because she didn't know she had to ask at the ultrasound appt. However, we desperately wanted her to have a little girl so we had her baby shower and everything that we bought done in pink and purple, hoping we could wish the baby a girl. She figured that if it turned out to be a boy she could take everything back and just say that she had been told it was going to be a girl if the kid asked about the shower pictures. Well it turns out that all of our wishing had a happy ending and she did have a girl. Girls really are a lot of fun to shop for! Steph - Yep, back to you. Just going down the list and replying. Teaching is going a little better. I have my moments. We are at the beginning of a new trimester so things are always a little easier then. I just had the kids turns stuff in so now I have my first pile of grading to do. That always makes life crappy, but I am going to take it home and do it tonight while I watch my DVR of biggest loser. I don't have to worry about not getting time to spend with DF anymore since he is at work. Jackie - Sometimes shocking your system with all the extra calories makes it realize that it doesn't have to hold onto to the fat so tight and you acutally lose pounds. Cycling the calories is a good way to keep your body guessing and as long as most of the time we keep them low, we are good to go. Janet - Glad to hear that the dentist went well. When I finally got insurance from my first teaching job in Vegas I went and had my teeth cleaned for the first time in 10 years. YIKES! My gums were not so good and they did root planing. OMG HOLY COW that hurt. They actually flossed my teeth with wire! They had to numb me to do it and then put me on pain killers for the next few days. I thought I was going to die. I honestly think it hurt worse that the LB surgery!

Pizzi- Are you ready for some tough love? If you are not ready at this time, that if fine. Put it away in your mind that someone has given you some and come back here when you are ready. By the time I get to post this you will probably have 100 other replies, but I want to take my time and post what I really want to say. Okay...here goes the tough love. And this will be a long post! Nope the brownies were not a good choice, but you ate them and now you need to move on and NOT do it again. You can't change what you have done but you can make better choices in the future. So the question is HOW IN THE WORLD DO I DO THAT? Well I will tell you that the answer is NOT going to come to you when you have a "brownie" (will now stand for anything that is not healthy for us for the remainder of this conversation) staring at you in the face. You have to have the tools and the mindset BEFORE that temptation ever comes up. We have to be ready to turn around at any particular moment and have a piece of brownie shoved in our face and realize that we are stronger than the calories, fat, sugar and peice of inanimate object that we are looking at. It gets harder as we have lost the weight and become a little more comfortable with our bodies. At first we were hell bent on getting losing, losing, losing. Well the newness has worn off and now we are just stuck with the realization that we will always have to fight the "brownies". Alright I am all about being practical so here are some suggestions that I have. 1. Take a piece of paper (one that you can fold up into your wallet/purse/pocket ) and divide it into sections. You may have to write down everything and then rewrite it to get it to all fit. a. Write down all the reasons that you had MAJOR, LIFE THREATENING SURGERY. Not the reasons that you wanted to just lose weight, but what caused you to make this drastic change in your life. b. Write down where you think you would be health wise in 10 years. What disesases, illness would you have? What meds would you be on. Look at your family for "inspiration". For me my mom died at 53 weighing 350+ pounds and had heart disease, diabetes, sleep apnea and a whole host of other disorders. Within 10 years, I was going to be there. c. Write down why you are more powerful than a brownie (this one is tough!) d. Find some typical foods that you would love to eat (your brownies) and look up the calories and then find out how much time you would have to spend working them off in the gym. e. Write down what about you makes you important enough to overcome your demons. f. Now you are going to want to fit all of this on a piece of paper in bullet form so when you are faced with you brownies you can look at it and allow you to mentally fight the war that has just come up. If you can justify eating that brownie after looking at your paper, then eat it, but have no regrets, and do not dwell on it. Instead you have faced the problem UP FRONT and not looked back on it. 2. Another possible tactic. I know that you are having a tough time getting your calories down. One thing that I have found that helps me is by eating the same foods that I like but with some simple substitutions and by finding ways to remove some unneccessary ingredients. For example. I make this dessert that had 1/2 cup of frozen berries, 2 TBSP of Cream cheese and 1/2 cup of granola. The cream cheese had 60 calories and I thought..."I wonder how this would taste if I didn't put the cream cheese in it". I tried it and guess what, I couldn't even tell that it was missing. Same thing with meatloaf. Instead of eating it with ground beef now I substitute grond chicken. As long as I keep all of my veggies and other healthy fillers in, I can't tell the difference. I really learned this from Subway. I found that if I went in and ordered a foot long sandwich (obviously pre-band) and got all this deli meat and cheese and then pilled it with my favorite veggies that I all I could really taste were the veggies anyways. So first I got rid of the meat and then the cheese, and the taste of the sandwich hardly varied at all. This is what I do all the time now. I will always fix something first and then think what can I do to lower or eliminate the calories without harming the integretity of the dish. 3. This is the one that everyone is going to hate. WE JUST HAVE TO HAVE WILL POWER SOMETIMES. Yep the age ol' dieting nightmare. Our will power will not always be perfect, but we have to be able to stand up to ourselves and tell ourselves no. Before this surgery I couldn't tell anyone NO, including myself. So when my stupid head told me that I needed to go to Carl's Jr and get 2 big hamburgers and eat them in the 4 minutes it took me to get home so that I could look famished for dinner that was going to be served in 30 minutes...I never said no. NOW, I am comfortable saying no. It has helped me professionally, personally, and mentally. I thought that everyone would hate me if I said no, but now they no longer just expect things out of me. And I don't just give in to all of my brain's wishes. That is making me a better person. 4. Talk about your surgery. I have to honestly say that one of the greatest factors to my success is the fact that I have been open and honest about the surgery. I don't care what other people think about me. Go to 1A of this email and that should show you why there is nothing to be ashamed of. The more you talk about the struggles and successes of your surgery the less likely people are to shove food at you. We have one lady in our science department that brings in treats every week. After the 2nd week of school I told her about my surgery and not ONCE has she come in and offered me the food. She told me, if you ever want it, you may have some, but I don't want to push something on you that you obviously don't want. Yesterday at the staff meeting, the administration gave little food baskets to everyone for all there hard work during scheduling. However instead of a food basket I got a nice card signed by all the administrators, because the know that a food basket is pointless to me. I don't feel singled out, I feel very blessed that these people care enough about me to know what I need. Some people can't make these connections on their own and they need you to school them. You need to POINT BLANK tell your sister, I love to visit you but for me, I CAN'T have this food here. Tell her that she really is putting a barrier between the two of you if she constantly is serving you this food. Iknow this is tough, but I had to do it with my dad, my BF, and my brother. I asked them if they would offer a beer to a recovering alcholoic. All of them said no, and then I said then why in the hell would you offer me a cookie! Codependency is a huge thing. I HATED my mother and still am very resentful towards here for the ENORMOUS amount of physical and mental abuse she inflicted on my brother and I. However when I was growing up, I couldn't live without it. Yes I know part of that was because she was my mom, but I would let others do the same thing to me, because I was so codependent. Wow I knew this would be long, but I had no idea how long. If there is any advice in here you don't like. Think about why you don't like it. Is it because it is hard...well guess what CHANGING is hard, but maybe just try part of it. If you don't like it because it goes against all of your moral beliefs, then ignore it. I will never know and it will not hurt my feelings. Even if you came back and said "Salsa you are full of crap and are an idiot" I would think " her loss!" and keep on lovin' ya. This is what friends are for. We have to be here during the good times and the bad. We have to be able to look (or type) at the other person and say "stop being an idiot" If we don't do that as friends, really we are no better than an enemy. Good luck.

Ummm...Yeah...throwing 60 pound bales of hay makes my workout routine look like a pansy! I would definetly count it! Welcome to all the new challengers. This really is a great group of core people.

Ahhhh....I can now go to bed and know that when I get up in the morning I am still going to be able to speak with my family. I seriously was going through withdrawls. I think I was able to give up fatty fried food easier than I was able to live with out you guys. I guess that is a good transfer addiction!!! ALright I have got to go to bed but I did PM Alex. Janet I hope you get some food quickly. I would die if I ate this late. I eat at 6:30, 9, 11:30, 2:30 and 5:30. The 9 am feeding is new thanks to the nutritionist. At 6 I feel like I have died if I haven't eaten!.

I don't know how you can even want to be that tight personally. I know this is an individual journey but I REFUSE to drink any of my calories so if I can't get down food I would starve to death. I think that has been the "secret" to my success. Only EATING good foods and that means being a little looser and using my will power a little more. But that is what worked for me!

I am thinking that I am going to have an unfill before my TT so that I don't have to worry about it getting too tight while under the stress of surgery and I am going to see if I can maintain without it. I like you don't keep my fill very tight. In fact after a slight fill and then 2 weeks later an partial unfill, I still am tighter than I would like. My doc thinks that I was going to have to have a partial unfill to maintain anyways. I have 2 years worth of fills as part of my self-pay program so I figure if I start gaining then I go get another fill. Right now I just wish that I lived closer so that I could have some of this one taken out!

1.5 hours of cardio and weights. Ahhhh you have to love that jello feeling in the muscles!

My fill nurse told me to have the surgeon prescribe liquid pain killers after my TT so that I didn't have to worry about getting pills stuck. The nutritionist at my in person support group advises doing as many liquid/chewable forms as possible. I do a chewable vitamin still (got immune to the taste after a few months), chewable calcium and then I swallow my birth control pill whole because it is so tiny.

I am afraid that I am going to get to tight. I have a low tolerance for fills. In fact I only have 1.7 cc in a 10 cc band now, which shocks my fill nurse and doc that I have lost so much, so fast, with such little restriction. I was completely unfilled (due to getting something completely lodged) for 40+ days in November and still managed to lose 10 pounds. I guess because I don't have a problem finding restriction that it would be best if I got the unfill. LJM did you get a complete unfill or just a partial. Thanks for the responses

Welcome to my ultimate question. Technically I am still 16 pounds over weight but I am really happy with my size right now especially with my upcoming TT. My doc would like me to slow down/stop the weightloss so that I can have a stable weight before/after the TT. I am fairly muscular so I am going to be a little bit heavier anyways. I will decide after I heal from the TT if I want to lose the last bit or just ne happy. I went to my nutritionist who is helping me transition into maintenance. I know a lot of people have stated that they didn't do anything difference but that their weight loss just slowed to a crawl. For me I had to up the calories because I was still losing 2-3 pounds per week with my workout schedule. My fill is still tighter that I would like it to be but I am dealing with it for right now but mainly because I live 6 hours from my doc and don't want to take another day off of work. Good luck and let us know what happens...I am eagerly waiting to hear from more people about life at goal.

Who knows what 20 pounds will bring. My body proportions (with the exception of my belly) really did change in the last 20 pounds. In fact I gained a butt! I have had a flat butt my entire life, but slowly I began seeing a little bit of a butt. I have nice curves and my thighs look amazing. So the belly might go away. For me it just didn't. My question is, when you are clothed can you tell that you still have a belly? For me I can't. Here are my pictures just to illustrate. Sorry the top one is so big, it wouldn't let me just copy part of it. The belly flab pictures and my current pics were taken about 5 pounds apart, but my belly still looks the same! Warning: Belly Flab Pictures. You may want to skip it!

Karey and LJM (and others that maybe able to answer) - I know that you both had unfills prior to your surgery. Was that suggested by your PS or your lap band doc? When I talked to my nurse practitioner that does my fills (who is banded herself) about whether or not I should have an unfill she said that unless I tend to throw up after surgery that it is not necessary. However I just had to have a slight unfill because I was too tight, and still in my opinion am tighter than I want to be (most people would kill for this level of restriction, I just hate it). I guess what I am asking is do you think it would be better for me to have no restriction (I have very good will power and VERY good eating habits now) or to keep my current level of restriction and not even have the temptation of slipping back to old eating habits? Wow this is very wordy! Hope you followed along!

So I have decided that my fill is still too tight. We have been told that we are supposed to finish our meal in 20-30 minutes. But in order for me to get in everything that I am supposed to it is taking me at least an hour to eat because everything under the sun is getting stuck! I got stuck on YOGURT this morning. How in the world does that happen? Then trying to get in my high fiber cereal took about an hour and I did have that much. GRRRRRRR... My snack went down alright, but here I sit trying to eat my quiche for lunch and I feel like I am swallowing an elephant. I am really hoping that it loosens up soon because I don't have very many sick days and I need to save them in case something really comes up. Right now it is just an inconvenience. Nicole - Vegas can be fun, I just didn't like living there. We were supposed to go down there for vacation at the end of the school year but with the upcoming tummy tuck and my soon to be hubby taking 2 months off of work to take care of me we just aren't going to make it. I would really like to go back as a visitor. It really can't be as bad as I remember it! Ruby - That is one of the very few things I like about where we live - no allergies. There is nothing growing over here to be allergic to. But I guess if it takes sneezes to resist the cookies, I am glad you have allergies:tt2:! Jackie - nice job on the cheese cake. My DF and I bought 2 small slices of cheesecake the other night but I only ate 3 or 4 bites cause I didn't really like it. before I would have eaten it anyways but now it just isn't worth it. Huge NSV for me! Peaches - Thanks for the tip on the spag squash. The same thing happened to me that happened to Janet...it was too crunchy! As for a new fill, YIKES I would think that would hurt! That is why I am going to have my fill almost totally removed before my TT because I don't want to end up too tight and have them sticking that big ol' needle in my belly when I am sore. Chim - I sometimes wish that I had gotten a personal trainer. I think right now...what is the point, but maybe after I heal from the TT and am ready to focus on sculpting that I might need to. Janet - Hope your day is going well. You are right about hating being the fat chick. I have always been incredibly shy and refused to talk in front of people unless I KNEW exactly what I was going to say. I could give a presentation or a lecture because I had prepared it but just joining in on a discussion or group participation I refused to do because I always figured if I said something that wasn't right that they would think I was stupid AND fat. At least if I kept my mouth shut they would just think I was fat. Not much self esteem. I am happy to report that I am starting to have some self esteem and confidence. It is an odd feeling as I have never had it my entire life. Well I have copies to make and activities to prepare for tomorrow so I had best get busy. I would like to NOT have to come in at 5AM tomorrow. I miss my sleep during spring break!

I buy the low carb slim fast at wal-mart. They are not bad as long as they are REALLY cold.

Oh I am so with you. I still walk to my car some days and think DANG Karri if you could just lose those 100 pounds you would look amazing. Then I have to stop and think...uhhhhh you don't have 100 pounds to lose you have ONE pound. Really I have 11, but my lap band doc doesn't want me to lose much more because he is afraid I am going to start compromising muscle tone because with the exception of my Jabba the Hut belly that has formed due to excess skin, I am pretty thin. I put on a size 8 pair of pants the other day and totally broke down into tears. I have NEVER been in single digits since I was probably in size 6 month clothing!! My mind has not caught up with my body, but I think that it will slowly will. My end goal will still not have me at a "healthy" BMI but I am really muscular so I don't really care, I am just happy with where I am now. Okay I gotta go the kids are streaming in.

I did follow my plan yesterday. I got to 1300 calories but I am still really tight. I had a hard time getting my breakfast down this morning. I would love to get a bit more of an unfill but I just don't have the time. I am almost out of sick days so I don't have the option of going for an unfill until June! I guess I will just live with the stuck feeling for the next three months.:puke: