Long time no post...

Hey there! I haven't posted in ages. Lots of changes. I ran my first 5K. My time was slow, but I'm sure it will get better. :) It was fun. I was lucky that Sarah took her time to drive down from Alexandria to run it with me. I don't know if I would have made it without her! Thanks, Sarah!

My weight is down to 182. (A little up from that sometimes.) Which means I've lost 130 pounds. It's not as low as the surgeon wants me to be. He wants me at 170. My year appointment is Jan 4th (less than 3 weeks). I don't think my weight will go down anymore. I think the surgeon is going to be unhappy with me. :( I hate getting yelled at!

Sarah has found a really cool reading challenge for next year. It's called Gilmore Girls Reading Challenge. I love the Gilmore Girls. I have every season on DVD. I've watched them all several times. I'm going for the Rory status. I don't read as much as I used to. I used to read while I was smoking. Now I don't smoke, so I don't read as much. Sarah listed the books she's going to try to read to get to Rory status. I'll do the same!

Classics:

Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
Inferno, Dante
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
Lady Chatterly's Lover, DH Lawrence
Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe

Modern Classics:

A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
Catch 22, Joseph Heller
The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut
A Streetcar named Desire, Tennessee Williams

Non-fiction:
Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders, Bugliosi and Gentry
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
The Dirt: Confessions of the Most Notorious Rockband, Motley Crue
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, McNeil and McCain

Others:
The House of Sand and Fog, Andre Dubuss III
The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides
Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen
Love Story, Erich Segal
Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann

Bold= read

Couch to 5K

I finally started the couch to 5K today. I told myself that I was going to start it when I've lost 100 lbs. I have no idea when I'll get there! I had gotten to see a loss of 95 lbs at one point. Now, for the past few weeks, my scale has bounced up and down by 3 lbs. It doesn't want to get below that 95 lb mark! It's very frustrating. I haven't done a vlog in a while. I think people will get tired of me saying "Hi guys! It's week such and such and my weight hasn't changed again!" LOL I finally stopped waiting for that 100 lb loss! I started it today! I felt very awkward. I think I bounce too much. I'm in the process of reading some books on running. Maybe I will pick up some pointers. I "run" down the side of one of the busiest roads in the county. Most people have to pass my path on the way to my work! I was worried about people seeing me and laughing at me because I look like a dork when I'm trying to run. It doesn't look pretty to see a fat woman bouncing down the side of the road. But, when I thought about it, I see people running down the side of the road and I never think they look funny. I always think "I should be doing that." So, maybe some heavy person will see my fat ass running down the road and will get inspired. Maybe they will think "If she can do it, I can too." And maybe they will. And maybe they will lose weight. And maybe they will be healthier. And maybe, just maybe, I will have affected some one's life for the best by being a big ole dork! :)

I'm in love!!!

No, I'm not going to gush on about my husband. (Tho, I do kind of like him!) I'm going to gush on about my new shoes!

http://www.famousfootwear.com/product.asp?product_id=1015553&variant_id=68143?CMP=KNC-Adwords&partnerid=Adwords&cpc=Adwords&campaign=FF-Nike&hbx_ou=50&cpckw=Nike%20Alvord&hbx_pk=Nike%20Alvord


They are super comfortable! I didn't want to go the gym today because my feet were hurting so bad yesterday. I did an hour on the treadmill and my shoes were slipping around on my feet. I ended up with some spots that were rubbed pretty raw. :( But, I got up this morning (a little bit later due to excessive snooze button punching!), put on my new shoes and went to the gym. I only had time to do the treadmill for 45 minutes. :( But, my feet didn't hurt at all. They actually felt better once I put on the shoes. Sarah had recommended some socks for me to get, but they didn't have them anywhere around here. I did buy some athletic socks with moisture wicking. What a difference new shoes and socks make!!!

We were out really late last night. I tried Foot Locker. They had the Nike + shoes that I'm really interested. But, none in my size. The good news about going there first is that I finally learned my shoe size. All my life, I'd had wide feet. I've always bought wide shoes. But, apparently losing weight has changed the size of my feet as well. I went to Famous Footwear. I found the above shoes. I bought them, still wanting the Nike+. I figured that if I found the Nike+, I would still need a different pair of sneakers for things other than the gym. Then we went to JC Penney. They had a pair of Nike+ in my size. They are pink. I will have to learn to get over that. :( I bought them. Now I need the Nike sensor. I tried Best Buy, Target and Wal-mart. NO luck! :( I did buy an armband for my 2nd Gen ipod touch. But, my arm is still too big for it. I don't know if I should buy a different one online. The armband I bought doesn't have a lot of stretch. Maybe a more elastic armband will do the trick, but I would really hate to waste money on something I can't use. :( Stupid fat arms! When are you going to get smaller?!?!

I did some looking online this morning. It turns out I only need the sensor and not the receiver. The second gen ipod touch has a build in sensor. How sweet is that? Now I just need to figure out what to do about an armband. The sensor does me no good without the ipod. :(

Here are my Nike+ Shoes:

http://www.famousfootwear.com/product.asp?product_id=1017093&variant_id=71945

Another post-op post!

I am just over 9 weeks post-op. I have learned how to eat. I have to take small bites, eat slowly and chew a lot. I have lost 56 lbs. I have lost two dress sizes. I have lost them and will never find them again. It's a great feeling. I am going to get my hubby to take pictures of me tonight. I don't know if i will post them. I kind of self-conscious about pictures. He's also going to measure me. I did my measurements a couple of days before surgery. I will be able to see some real numbers. I lost 40 lbs in the first three weeks. I started going to the gym. Then, I went three weeks with no loss! It was very frustrating. I finally started losing again and have lost 16 more pounds. I'm feeling great. I go to the gym at 6 am most mornings and do the treadmill for an hour. I'm going to start couch to 5k soon. I want to give running a try. I love walking on the treadmill. Hopefully, I will like running too. I just found out this weekend that there is a marathon in Disney in March. I think if I run a marathon, this would be the one.

Eating hasn't really been an issue for me. I make the right choices, eat my protein first and have no problems. The worse part was the liquid diet. Pre-op was horrible. I was hungry all the time. Post-op I was just so tired of sweet stuff. It seemed that everything I ate (or drank) was sweet. The protein shakes, pudding and applesauce. I was so happy to move on the soft foods. I had to be on soft foods for a couple of weeks. It wasn't bad. I have graduated to full foods. I can eat whatever I want. I have heard that some people "dump" after surgery. That certain foods don't agree with them. Eating sugar can make them really sick. I haven't had this problem, but I really don't push it. I don't eat unhealthy things. The worse I've done is one mozzarella stick at a meal. It's fried which makes it bad, but cheese has tons of protein. I'm obsessed with TVP. I use it dry and put it on Greek yogurt. It gives me the granola crunch but with protein instead of carbs. :) I eat a lot of ground turkey and chicken breasts.

I'm in my "honeymoon." Right now it doesn't really matter what I eat, I will lose weight. This only happens for 9 months to a year. During this stage when we aren't hungry, we are supposed to be learning to make the best choices. I have embraced this. My mom hasn't. I hope that she gets it before her "honeymoon" is over. She gets mad at me when she asks me about what she's eating. I think she wants me to tell her that she's doing fine, but I'm not going to lie. I've told her to stop asking my opinion if she doesn't really want it.

Anyhow! I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm feeling great. I have tons of energy and I already feel smaller. :)

Long time no blog...

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. I finally finished that hell of a 6 month medically supervised weight loss period. My insurance approved the surgery quickly once everything was done. The doctor's office had some illnesses every time someone got my jinxed file. But, my surgery was finally scheduled for January 15th. I was so elated. My long wait finally came to an end!!!! I had to do some more pre-op testing. I was nervous through all of that. I kept thinking that something could happen that would cause the surgeon to not let me have the surgery. I did the two week liquid liver shrinking diet. That was very difficult. I had this big ole hungry stomach that didn't get any food... But, I made it through that.

The day of the surgery came. I had to be at the hospital around 9 in the morning. I have a two hour drive to the hospital. I didn't really sleep the night before, so getting up was no problem. Besides, I am usually at work at 7 am so it would have actually been sleeping in for me.

It took three people to get my IV. I sat in a little room with no door waiting for a while for my surgery to start. I was finally wheeled into the OR. Next thing I remember, I was waking up. I had some horrible pain in my stomach. They do the surgery laproscopically but they have to blow the abdomen up with air in order to work. It took a while for me to wake up. I remember seeing my son in the corner of the room and trying to get him to come over and see me. I was reaching out with my hand gesturing him to come to me. Once I woke up I got to eat a few ice chips. I had a catheter in and I hated that part the worse. It made me feel like I had to pee. I kept asking for them to take it out. I wanted a drink of water in the worse way. My mouth and throat were so dry, but I couldn't drink water. I had to be happy with the ice chips. The nurse from the recovery room finally wheeled me to my room late at night.

The rooms are huge. It's bigger than my living room at home. Once the catheter came out. I got to go for a walk. I had a morphine pump, but I'm not really big on using pain medication. The bed wasn't really comfortable. Technicians had to come in all the time to check my vitals. I ended up walking a few times during the night out of boredom.

The day after, I had to go down to radiology for a swallow test. I turns out that I had some swelling in the opening from my esophagus to stomach so nothing was going down. It took me an extra day in the hospital for the swelling to go down. Obama was speaking in Baltimore the day I was leaving the hospital. It would have been a mad house had I needed to stay any later.

The ride home was horrible! Baltimore has extremely bumpy streets. Every single bump made my stomach feel like it was going to shoot out of the top of my head! Fred kept apologizing and I finally had to tell him to stop apologizing. He didn't put the bumps in the road!

We had a friend watching the house and Jesse's dog freaked out. She went and stayed outside in the freezing cold. He said every time he shined the flashlight on her she'd run out of the light. My mom and dad finally had to take Jesse over to get her. Since I had to stay an extra day, they went and got all my dogs and took them to their house. Luckily all the dogs behaved,even the big beast of a dog! He could have cleaned off a coffee table with his monster tail!

The pipes in the house froze while we were gone so we had no water. We had to turn on some heat and put a heater in our pump house to thaw everything out. Luckily no pipes broke. That would have been a disaster. Our pump house needs to have an old fashioned 60 watt bulb on during the winter. That bulb is enough to keep the pump house warm. We forgot to check the bulb and it had apparently burned out. :(

This post is getting much too long... I think I'll post it now and post another later. :)