Post-Op Week 44 Progress Report

Really pleased with this week’s progress!  This is proof that the road to losing weight, no matter how you do it, is not a straight line.  I plot my weight values on a spreadsheet in Excel every week, and because I am a science teacher, I generate a graph of the result.  Yeah, I know I’m a great big nerd.  It definitely has a negative slope but the line is far from straight.

This week, I did bump my calories eaten daily to 1200 so that I’d stop grazing at night–I’d been doing it for the last couple of weeks, and it was starting to bother me a lot.  Increasing my calorie intake seems to have worked.  Grazing is not a habit I want to take up because I know once I get to maintenance, I will keep doing it and giving myself an excuse to eat whenever I want to.  This is not a behavior I need to adopt.  I guess the first step to solving the problem is awareness, right?   So eating 1200 calories daily it is.  I’m still losing, but this gives me a good idea of how I will need to adjust things once I get to maintenance.  It may be time to visit with the dietician again to get a little guidance.

At the gym this week I gave the elliptical machine a go for the first time and have discovered that it isn’t too terrible, so I’ll be using it more often.  I like that I can simulate running without all the shock to my knees.  I also like that I can “run” backwards and work a different set of muscles.  I also like that I can work my upper body at the same time I’m getting a lower body workout.  I do, however, need to figure out how to dismount the stupid thing correctly lest I hurt myself trying to get off the damn thing.

The challenge this week (and really the next 3 weeks) is to fight the desire to not cook for myself.  The end of the school year makes it tough to want to do food prep but I know it is one of the things that helps me succeed at this process.  I did fix myself some turkey patties for turkey burgers this week, and tomorrow night I’ll be making bacon-wrapped barbecue chicken breast tenders (a new favorite in our house as of late).  So there will be plenty to eat.

I am also going to make sure I get moving as much as possible to keep my physical activity levels up.  This is something I need to be much more conscious about because the fatigue of the end of the school year is really starting to settle in, and the old me would have just said “f all this, I’m tired and I’m going to just be a slug.”  Now, I really want to get up and about, but there are some days when it is tough to get motivated to do it.  I’m planning to hit the city rec center this week to get a membership so that I can start swimming this summer.  Or at least try to swim, anyway.  I think I might take adult swim lessons so I can relearn how to do it the right way.

I’m starting to see more and more things like this on my body lately:

The varicose veins in my legs really stand out now that there’s not so much fat covering them, and it’s a bit disconcerting.

There are veins sticking out in various places (arms, legs) that really gross me out.  For example, there’s this one vein in my right arm that sticks way out when I ride the recumbent bike.  I’ll be riding and then it just pops on out.  And that’s the only time it does that. Otherwise I don’t ever see it.

I kind of liken it to the lakes around here.  because the lake levels are so low due to the drought we’ve been in for the past 3 years, so much stuff has been uncovered–cars, trees, you name it, it’s been found in area lakes because the water levels are scary low.  Now that all this fat has taken its leave from my frame, what’s left behind is just yucky.  The saggy skin on my legs is covered by my Bermuda shorts, most days the batwings I’ve got are covered by shirt sleeves, my neck is one big wrinkly wattle, and I don’t feel like this gut of mine will ever truly disappear without some kind of surgical intervention.  I know that things will settle into place after I get to my goal weight, but it’s still disconcerting to see what I refer to as “the wake.”  I don’t want to have plastic surgery–I scar ugly, and I know the recovery from the types of surgery I would have to have in order to look “normal” post-massive weight loss is hellish.  But I just want to look “normal.”  And I don’t think it’s ever going to happen.

I’m still 58 pounds away from my goal.  And I keep wondering where it’s going to come from.  People keep telling me that I’m tiny, that I’m small, that I’m thin, even skinny.  But I’m not.  I know I’m not.  Smaller than I have ever been, yes.  Tiny?  Not hardly.  Thin?  Thinner than I’ve ever been, yes.  But not skinny.

I know I promised a list of proteins that I eat in order from easiest to digest to hardest, but it is late and I’ve got to be at school tomorrow morning at 7 am.  I’ll craft the entry tomorrow while my students are AP testing since I won’t have but a handful of students in class tomorrow.  I’ll post it up tomorrow night.  Until then…later!