Post-Op Week 21 Progress Report and Evaluating Goals

Weight loss during a holiday week is always a victory to celebrate, whether you have had WLS or not.  Holidays are always challenging, even when you plan every bite and sip you take.  I’m glad that I was able to post a loss this week, because this week’s loss puts me within 4 pounds of my December 31 weight loss goal.  I am confident that I will reach that goal in the next week or two.  I am thinking that it might be time to set some new goals.  But what goals to aim for now?

One of the things I have considered doing is buying a pair of goal pants, but I’m not sure what size my body will settle at.  A 14?  A 16?  Dare I think it…a 12?  I just don’t know.

I look in the mirror sometimes and wonder if I’ll ever be able to shop straight sizes.  A big part of me seems to think that no, I’ll always be shopping in the plus size section of the store no matter how much weight I lose.  At least for my pants and skirts, anyway.  I’m really lucky in that my panniculus isn’t huge and doesn’t dangle down like it does in some folks, but I do have a spare tire that looks like it’s going to hang around even after I get to my goal.

I know that I’m not quite 5 months out and that I should really be more patient with this process, but it is hard to be so patient when you’ve been so fat for so long and the weight is just flying off at a previously unseen and unheard of pace.  I never thought it would come off as fast as it has, but it has.  I’m not complaining–not at all!–just making an observation.  I suppose because it has come off so fast I’m expecting my body’s shape to catch up just as fast.   And because it isn’t, it’s slightly disappointing.  But this is what Spanx was made for, right?  😉

I have weight loss goals in mind, and those will be in place until I hit my personal goal.  I’d love to be at my surgeon’s goal by March 31.  That would be a little over 8 months post-op, and would see me losing 177 pounds since my consult in May 2013.  That’s only 54 pounds from now, and I think with a bit of tinkering to my eating (cutting down on fat grams and increasing plant intake) and the addition of strength training to my exercise routine, it is doable.

I have some exercise goals in mind as well.  I’m planning on participating in my first 5K in March, once I’ve gotten a bit more weight off and am more comfortable running for longer periods of time.  I’d like to get to the point where I do at least one race a month, and as I feel more capable and confident, perhaps 6 races total each season.  I have discovered that I really do enjoy running–for me, it is like meditation time.  It is great alone time, and it really forces me to slow down mentally, to focus on what my body is doing, and to clear my head.

Then there are the other goals I have for myself, the ones that are on what Dr. Ashmore calls “the juicy sexy list.”  The goals there are ones I haven’t really talked about but I’ll share a couple of them.  They might seem silly, but dammit, they’re MY goals and they are not silly to me.  They are:

• To buy and wear a pair of knee-high leather boots.  I’d prefer they didn’t have a heel, but they need to be knee high.
• To take a trip to Europe with my husband in which a trans-Atlantic flight in coach is as comfortable as possible.

I will get to those goals eventually, but knocking down the others (weight loss and exercise) has to happen first to get to those two.  And I’m sure as I continue on with this process, I’ll think of other life goals I want to achieve.  But right now, I’m so focused on losing this weight that it is tough for me to think of the other things in my life that I want as the weight comes off.  I want so much for this extra 104 pounds to be gone that I think I’ve got tunnel vision.  I haven’t decided if this is good or bad yet.

So on I go, logging my meals, doing my exercise, going to therapy, attending my support group…all in the hopes that I can cross some of the things on the “juicy sexy list” off within the next year or so.  I’m soldiering on because I have a bigger goal in mind, and I’m not going to stop until I get there.  And once I get there, I’ll set other goals for maintenance.  But I can’t think about that now.  I’ve got 104 more pounds in my way that need to be gone for me to even think about maintenance.  Until then, it’s “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”

Today’s eating was pretty okay.  I ate a few more starchy carbs than usual at breakfast, but it’s not like I eat toast every day.  Protein was good, at 84 grams, carbs 27 grams, fat at 44 grams.   I ate an awful lot of beef today, but as I’ve said before, I don’t typically eat beef unless I’m craving it.  And this weekend, I was definitely craving it.  Thanks, nature, you suck.

Today’s food choices, from upper right: crab cake and sirloin steak sample from Central Market; sirloin steak and Texas style green beans (HEB brand); house roasted seasoned roast beef slices from Central Market and a Monterey jack cheese stick; Trader Joe’s turkey meatball (I ate one); scrambled egg, bacon, a bit of hash browns and a slice of wheat toast (I left most of the hash browns and a whole slice of toast behind); multivitamin and calcium supplements x2, B12 and iron supplements. I actually didn’t end up eating a meatball, I ate the rest of the chicken breast I prepped for my lunches this week (it was 1.25 oz of chicken breast, so about the same size as a meatball and the same amount of protein but no carbs and less fat).

Saturday’s food was made up of leftovers.  I had leftover beans and hushpuppies that I ate about an hour before I went to the gym and sweated them off.   I also turned my lunch into two meals:  lunch and dinner.  I was low on protein before the end of the day so I had to drink an Isopure, yuck.  The only reason I keep them around is if I’m short on protein, high on calories.  They’re good in a pinch.  Otherwise I really do try to get all my protein from food sources.  But I was able to get 87 grams of protein in, 44 carbs and 46 fat.

Saturday’s food choices, from upper right: leftover pinto beans and jalapeno hushpuppies (carb loaded before the gym); stir-fry with sirloin, onions and zucchini from Genghis Grill; leftover blackened tilapia; Isopure Zero Carb; multivitamin and calcium supplements x2, iron supplement.