What the???? and Perspective

Holy cow! Stepped on the scale last night to see 307 after getting down to 296!!! I know some of it is water because I feel bloated and my hands and ankles have been swollen, but geez! It isn’t 11 lbs of water. I’m not going to live in denial…this past week, with my birthday on Thursday, I have been eating a lot of things I shouldn’t. Mainly carby things that are going to make my more hungry which means I started “grazing” instead of sticking to three meals a day…not a good combination obviously. It scares me a little bit though because honestly…quantity-wise, I wasn’t eating a lot, but when you are doing a half assed low carb diet, your body is just going to react as if you are back on the high fat diet and respond accordingly.

So, here is my gameplan:

1. Get back on my “nuts and bolts” diet. This means I’m going to be having one protein shake a day and two low carb meals. I’m going to do this at least for the next week just to “detox” from all the carbs I’ve been ingesting.
2. I’m also going to get back to logging my food intake at sparkpeople. It is the only way I can truly be aware of how many calories I’m taking in. Part of the problem over the last week is I would allow myself to think “Ok, so I’m having some nachos…I only ate three! Big deal.” The problem is, I’d be eating a little something else a few hours later. Not logging my food allowed me to deny how much food I was actually eating. Obviously, if I gained 11 lbs in a week, I was eating a lot more than I thought.
3. Now that I am feeling better (again, more to come on this later), I want to start walking again. It is starting to get hot here in Texas (I went on a walk yesterday with Greg and had a hard time keeping up).

Today went fairly well although I did manage a few more bites of birthday cake lol. One thing I’m noticing is that in the past, I would typically beat myself up over a gain like this. Especially after FINALLY getting under 300 lbs. I won’t lie, the suckage factor is at least a 9 on a scale from 1-10, but I don’t feel as if I’ve lost complete control. I am confident that I can get back on program and there isn’t this nagging fear in the back of my head that maybe this is just the beginning of the end. I KNOW it isn’t. Besides, I have some awesome clothes I got off craigslist that I want to get into pronto. I’m also enjoying my life WAY too much now to give it up for a few bites of something bad.

I’ll end this particular post with a little birthday anecdote. I basically celebrated my birthday over about three or four days. Thursday was my actual birthday so I spent it with Greg (yes, back together again lol). Just a simple evening at his place eating pizza, drinking a little vino and watching some tv while snuggling on the couch. For my gift, he had blown up one of my favorite pictures of my mom and tanner and then another recent one of tanner and I that was very similar and put them in pretty silver frames…such a thoughtful gift and exactly what I love…you can’t go wrong with picture gifts for me. We are both into photography, so he knew exactly what would melt my heart. I have both pictures on my bedside table now.

Friday, Tanner and I attended his first concert as you have already seen by my post yesterday. We had an amazing time, ate at Zushi Sushi beforehand…it was great! Music has always been such a huge part of my life and when my son lost his hearing, that was one of the things I grieved over…thinking that I wouldn’t be able to share my love of music with him and here we were having the time of our lives at his first concert. Good stuff! We were absolutely exhausted by the time we made it home, but it is one of those memories I think will last a lifetime.

Saturday, I had asked friends and family to meet us out at a local restaurant ChaCha’s for some margaritas and good texmex. At the last minute EVERYONE started canceling on me. I’m sure it had a lot to do with Easter being the next morning; I mean, who wants to go out and get plastered when they have to get up for mass the next morning lol? Other friends had emergencies come up, I completely understood. Erik even stayed home…he said he wasn’t feeling well. By then, I was just feeling pretty crappy. I had ordered this huge cake and it looked like only about 3 people would be showing up…I felt like such a loser lol! I decided to head to the restaurant without the cake and was trying to not dwell on the fact that it looked like the evening was going to be a bit of a bust.

So, as I sat at the restaurant, all by myself, for about 45 minutes lol…my best friend Shannon was running late…I started to feel worse. All of a sudden, I just stopped and said “You are NOT going to let this ruin what has been one of the most amazing birthdays of your adult life. You are healthier than you’ve been since you were in your 20’s. You had an amazing night with your boyfriend, an AMAZING night with your son and you are about to spend a great night with a few friends and eat the best damn birthday cake ever!(shannon picked it up on her way to the restaurant lol)” Not to mention I had people coming out of the woodwork on facebook to wish me a happy birthday and congratulate me on this last year. I had a heck of a lot to be thankful for.

It is all about perspective folks. When you step back to look at the big picture, you can relish in a beautiful landscape OR you can choose to focus on the few brown blades of grass in an otherwise see of green foliage. I choose to take it all in and recognize that those few blades of dying grass only make me appreciate the thriving green even more.

Trying not to get discouraged

Ok, so I knew I would stall. Anyone who posts on the Obesity Help VSG forum talks about these stalls. Most likely, it has to do with our limited intake periodically putting our body into starvation mode which makes us plateau for awhile.

When I last went into the hospital, you might remember I was at 396. I bid adieu to the 400's forever and then promptly landed myself in the hospital with severe dehydration. After two days in the hospital and really nothing by mouth (a few sips of broth at each "meal," maybe a few bites of jello) I came home hydrated and weighing 402 lbs. I really didn't care about the "gain" because I was feeling much better and figured I'd rather be 402 lbs and able to walk and talk normally than 396 and near death. Since I came home from the hospital, I have bounced around between 400 and 404 and today I jumped on the scale (it being a full month since my surgery, I felt it was necessary) and I was at 405!!! I definitely don't like seeing the scale KEEP going up when I haven't broken 1000 calories since the surgery. If you are curious to see what I've been eating, you can do so here.

I know I can't REALLY be gaining fat, but I haven't been working out (that starts up this week) so I know it isn't muscle. As a matter of fact, I've been sleeping a bunch. People tend to go into hibernation phase after the surgery as your body tries to adjust to the limited intake and I think that is it partially. Often, I'm just so darn BORED, I lay down to read a bit and end up falling asleep.

So, I go to see my surgeon tomorrow (well really his physician assistant) and I made an appointment with my nut (nutritionist) as well. I've printed off a few weeks of my meal plans from sparkpeople and hope she can help me sort it out. THEY really want me to be doing two shakes a day and a small meal, NO snacks so I'm anticipating that she will talk about the fact that I've basically been eating small meals and occasionally snacks. I only started doing that because I thought I needed to try to get in more protein and up my calories a bit to break the plateau...that obviously isn't working though. I have a hard time getting the shakes down, but have ordered another kind and hope they will make it easier (they only require 4-6 oz of fluid so the volume is less). Maybe my carbs are too high? I'm basically trying to eat low carb, but I have been eating things (tomato based products like chili and spaghetti sauce) that I normally wouldn't be eating on my typical low carb diet.

Anyway, this past week I've also been on my period (the first in MONTHS!). I'm attributing this to the weight I have lost. With my PCOS, my periods get very unpredictable, especially when I'm gaining or maintaining a high weight. As my weight goes down, they start to become more regular. This is probably the most normal period I've had in at least a year, so that is good. My period may also be contributing to some of the gain I'm seeing, but I'm almost done now so stepping on the scale and seeing it go up another pound is alarming.

So, to sum it up...some of the things I think are contributing to the stall/gain include:

1. I'm very lucky to get in 40-50 oz of fluid (usually G2 Gatorade since plain water at any temp seems to upset my stomach) a day. I'm usually sipping on something all day (when I'm awake), but I can only sip so much at a time and filling my stomach with too much liquid still makes me a bit queasy so I have to be careful. I'm going to have to make a more concerted effort to get in at least 64 oz a day.

2. I've been completely sedentary! Since I got home from the hospital, I've been so worried about staying hydrated that I didn't really want to work out (even a quick walk on the treadmill) until I was sure I was doing well enough to keep myself out of the hospital. I think I'm fairly comfortable that I'm accomplishing that so today I am going back to the pool and may even start walking at night on the treadmill or with tanner outside.

3. Diet: I'm going to talk to my nut tomorrow and see what she thinks. If she tells me to get back on the two shakes a day and small meal with no snacks, I'll do that and see where it gets me. I'm not really "hungry" since the surgery, so it won't be hard to get back on their plan really....as long as I can find some protein shakes that don't make me want to hurl! Otherwise, I really don't know what more I can do besides stop eating altogether lol.

Finally, I have taken some pictures over the last month and hope to post them later today or tomorrow. Don't get too excited lol, I can't really see much of a difference since the surgery, but I can tell it in my body and my clothes...just not the pictures really.