Monthly Archives: September 2013

Sluggish and Increasing Movement

Posted on September 30, 2013 | Leave a comment

Late night post, but that’s the norm now since school occupies the bulk of my day.

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Today’s food choices from upper right: multivitamin and calcium supplements x2; Meyer lemon marinated turkey tenderloin (with broccoli and cheese, not shown); saltine crackers with almond butter; one-egg omelet with ham and cheese; honey garlic marinated flank steak with green beans and tomatoes. Not shown: sliced turkey breast (eaten as a snack).

Tomorrow is October 1–the day I planned to increase my step count to 8,000 steps daily.  I’m going to give it a try and see how it goes.  I know there are plenty of opportunities this month for lots of walking but I have got to work harder at doing it every day at work.  Walking during my planning period is becoming an impossibility now due to increased workload and kids coming in for tutoring the minute the bell rings at the end of the day.  By the time all the kiddos leave, I’m sapped of energy and ready to head home for the day.  It’s not the timing of my meals or my calorie intake, I’m pretty sure.  I eat pretty regularly and am hitting between 800-900 calories a day–my surgeon’s recommendation was 800-1000 daily, so I feel like I’m on target.  Perhaps I need to increase my iron intake, increase my sleep every night…I don’t know.  There are too many variables at work here.  I am supposed to get bloodwork done this month for my PCP as she wants 3-month labs, and this is the time for that.  I need to schedule that, stat.

I am considering entering the 1-miler for this race.  Not because there are donuts involved (a nice side bonus!), but because I want to see if I can improve my time from the race I’ll be in come November.  I have to give it more thought because I get hives when I get overly cold, and this race is at the end of January, which is precisely when it finally decides to act like winter here in Texas.  I keep thinking ahead to January because that is when my 6-month follow up appointment with my surgeon is, and I hope that I am in even better shape then than I am now.  I am planning to head to the gym starting next Monday to work toward increasing my activity a little bit each week as time permits.

Well, it is after 11 and I really ought to get into bed.  Tomorrow is a long, long day and there is much to be done.

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Posted in daily bites, eating, exercise, la guerra, post-op, the sleeve, vsg, weight loss surgery

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Post-Op Week 12 Progress Report and Musings on Cooking

Posted on September 29, 2013 | 3 comments

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This week’s loss was a good one.  It would have been greater had I not been retaining water (thanks, Nature, you suck sometimes)–I was a little puffy in the ankles this morning when I got up.  But hey, a kilo lost is a kilo lost and I’ll take it!  I am finally starting to see my belly flatten out (about time!) and when I look in the mirror in the mornings as I am getting dressed, I can actually see the obliques on my right side.  I can see my upper abdomen flattening out some. This is encouraging.  I’m closing in on 3 months post-op, and feeling better and better about hitting my goal of -100 pounds by Thanksgiving.  I am hopeful that by New Year’s, I will have lost a total of around 115 pounds or thereabouts.  I want my surgeon to be impressed and proud of my progress.

I spent a little time cooking this afternoon, but not as much as I normally do only because I had to work today so that took 3 hours of time I would usually spend cooking.  So I prepped some things to eat for the week, but also prepped some things to put in the freezer for times like next weekend when I know I am not going to have the time to cook since we will be out and about all day Saturday and unable to shop for groceries.

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Posted in daily bites, eating, meal planning, post-op, progreso, vsg, weight loss surgery

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Busy Saturday, Culling the Closet and Me Time

Posted on September 28, 2013 | Leave a comment

Today was a long day that began early with me having to go to training to be an Interact Club sponsor down in Dallas.  I’m not sure what fresh hell I’ve gotten myself into, but the group of kids I’m working with this year is really great so I am hopeful that their awesomeness will transcend any of the administrative suckage that accompanies being a school clubs sponsor.  The kids have some great service projects planned, and the training session today gave them even more ideas for things our club can do around our school and community so I am excited about what they’ll be doing this year.

After that, I came home and helped my hubby tidy up the house as our landlady and her husband were coming over today to take care of the lease renewal for our place.  This is an annual event that generally has us scrambling to clean and straighten up the place, and since he was home, my husband got a head start on the housework.  He’d done quite a lot by the time I arrived back home, so I did what I could given that most of it had been done and I wasn’t feeling well (thanks, Ma Nature…you’re right on time).  Landlady and her husband came and went, and so we left the house to go have dinner and do our grocery run for the week.  Saturday evenings are a good day to do the shopping as there are generally no samples being given out, and the store is pretty well calmed down by then–not too terribly crowded or overrun with kids and their parents.

But that’s neither here nor there.  We’ve found our food run shopping groove and that’s what matters.

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Posted in challenges, daily bites, eating, meal planning, post-op, vsg, weight loss surgery

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The Odd Body

Posted on September 27, 2013 | 2 comments

First, the food. Why?  It’s easier to talk about.  Today was a lower-calorie day than I’ve had in a while, but not for lack of trying to hit my daily goal of 800-900 calories.  I did hit my protein goal of 80 grams minimum, so that’s what I aim for first.  I worry about calories after that since I’m burning more calories than I know I am taking in by just breathing in and out every day. 🙂  Protein must take priority!

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Today’s food choices, from upper right: multivitamin and calcium supplements x2; Trader Joe’s crab stuffed flounder; Trader Joe’s turkey jerky; Goldfish crackers; cheesy barbecue turkey meatloaf minis; chicken taco filling. Not shown: Trader Joe’s mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli.

I was on my way out of the bathroom earlier this evening on my way to the kitchen to make myself dinner, and stopped by the full-length mirror that hangs on our bedroom closet.  I looked at myself and was displeased with what I saw.

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Posted in daily bites, eating, head trips, post-op, self-image, the body is a funny thing, vsg, weight loss surgery

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Trying to Find Balance

Posted on September 26, 2013 | 2 comments

The past few weeks have been a blur.  As the school year has progressed, life has gotten progressively busier.  Part of it is by choice, and part of it is the natural progression of the school year.  And yet another part of it is the new habits and behaviors one must adopt when choosing to have weight loss surgery.

We talked in our weekly weight loss support group tonight about how life tends to drastically change as new behaviors are implemented that were not previously a part of one’s life and how this might place strain on relationships you have with others.  I am fortunate in that my social support network understands the importance of these changes, and that they are supportive of my decision to take control of my health in this way.  I am also fortunate in that my husband is following the exact same path as I am, and that he too is sympathetic to the behavior changes, because he is making them too.

In all of this, though, I feel as though I am losing balance–there is a disturbance in the Force that is Me.

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Posted in daily bites, eating, la guerra, oh behave!, post-op, vsg, weight loss surgery

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Consumed.

Posted on September 25, 2013 | 4 comments

I’m a bit behind on posting lately, and it’s because school is taking up more time than I’d anticipated thanks to a greatly increased student enrollment.  I’ve also gotten involved in more volunteer work and now I’m private tutoring again.  Weekends this fall are all booked, each with something different to do.  I think my first free weekend is in November!  I think my next post needs to be about balance, because I feel like I have none right now.

I also need to schedule an appointment to see my doctor soon, as she wants 3-month labs.  I also need to ask her about the terrible edema I’m having in my legs.  No matter how much I drink, move, or control my sodium intake, I get horribly swollen legs nearly every day.  I can’t wear regular shoes, it’s that bad.  It was never this way pre-op, and I moved less, drank less, and ate way more salt!

In the meantime, here’s what I’ve eaten the past two days.

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Food choices for September 26, from upper left: scrambled egg with Rudy’s smoked ham slices; honey barbecue chicken and roasted seasoned potatoes; grilled salmon, mixed veggies and a bit of mashed potatoes (I tried to avoid the gravy as much as possible!); multivitamin and calcium supplements x2; chicken taco filling.

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Food choices for September 25, from upper left: scrambled egg with Rudy’s smoked ham slices; multivitamin and calcium supplement x2; chicken taco filling; leftover honey garlic marinated flank steak with leftover baked potato soup; honey barbecue chicken drumsticks and roasted seasoned potatoes.

 

I’ll add the captions later when I’m at my computer.

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Posted in daily bites, la guerra, post-op, vsg, weight loss surgery

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New Tracking Strategy and Today’s Daily Bite

Posted on September 23, 2013 | Leave a comment

Here’s what I ate today:

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Today’s food choices, from upper left: multivitamin and calcium supplements x2; roasted seasoned red potatoes; chicken taco filling; Trader Joe’s dark chocolate nibs; scrambled egg with a side of Rudy’s smoked ham; Rudy’s smoked beef tenderloin and pinto beans; honey barbecue chicken drumsticks. Not shown: Applegate Farms chicken breast slices and Goldfish crackers.

I decided this morning that I would track everything I ate and drank today so that I could avoid unplanned eating as much as possible.  This worked until this afternoon, when my students were doing their population genetics lab in which we use Goldfish crackers and model the genetics of the population of crackers.  We do this to study the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, a biological principle that basically says populations don’t evolve if certain conditions are in place for that population.  It’s a mathematical modeling lab and the kids really dig it.  I mean, they get to eat!  And I do too, if I want to.  Pre-surgery Me would have eaten a handful of crackers every class period, downing the equivalent to 6 servings of crackers.  But I can’t do that now, and I don’t want to.

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Posted in challenges, daily bites, eating, habits, oh behave!, planning, post-op, vsg, weight loss surgery

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Bonus Post: Food, Glorious Food!

Posted on September 22, 2013 | 4 comments

Dear readers, I owe you some Daily Bites. Life’s been a little hectic this past week so I haven’t been timely in posting them each day so I apologize in advance. As the school year wears on, this sort of thing tends to happen. So I bring you the weekend’s eats, plus what I’ll be eating this week that I fixed. Continue reading →

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Posted in cooking, daily bites, eating, meal planning, post-op, vsg, weight loss surgery

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Post-Op Week 11 Progress Report and Perspective, Part 2

Posted on September 22, 2013 | 4 comments

postopweek11-092213I knew I would have a loss this week since last week I had a slight gain due to water retention.  I didn’t realize that the loss would be this huge, though!   I knew my fluid retention was flushed out, partially because my hormone levels calmed down near the end of the week and I felt less inclined to eat everything I saw in sight, I drank water like it was my job (well, it kind of is, I guess…) and I peed some pretty epic pees.

Hey, I keep it real around here.

Anyway, I now weigh about what I weighed my junior year of college, which was 20 years ago.  It is trippy to think about.  Also trippy is an NSV that I wasn’t expecting so soon.

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Posted in big things, celebrations, la guerra, NSV's, oh behave!, post-op, progreso, success, the little things, the sleeve, vsg, weight loss surgery

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Perspective

Posted on September 20, 2013 | 2 comments

Tonight my husband and I had a couple of errands to run, and one of them was to make a stop at Dick’s Sporting Goods.  I’d been wanting to go up there to take pictures of myself next to weights that were equal to what weight I’d lost so far.  I’d done this the last time I’d made a serious effort to lose weight, and it was motivating and inspiring at the same time.  Any time I’d lost a significant amount of weight, I’d always had trouble conceptualizing what the weight I lost looked like.  Standing next to dumbbells helped me to see (and feel) what I’d previously been carrying around on my body.

Here I am with 75 pounds.  This represents the weight I’ve lost since June.

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Pardon the monochrome look–it’s Friday, and we wear school colors on Fridays.  I had been wearing my new Mizunos all day, but took them off once I got home to let my feet breathe and rest a little.

Then I decided to take a picture with the amount of weight that I’ve lost since I was at my heaviest.  This one was an eye-opener.

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Posted in being thankful, celebrations, daily bites, post-op, the sleeve, vsg, weight loss surgery

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