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Back Again!

OK, in February of 2011 I said I would get my ass back in gear. I had lost over 100 Pounds since getting my band and was doing great. Sadly I got comfortable. That means I learned things like: Sauces make things easier to eat
Ice cream is easy to eat
Alcohol is easy to drink
Saving your fat guy clothes as you lose weight makes gaining weight back easier as you don't have to go outside naked
So, after 18 months I bounced back up by about 30 pounds. Not horrific by my standards of weight loss but still pissed me off. I was still down net 70 but the direction had reversed. I had to do something.   I schedule a check up and possible fill. I needed to do that. I had become too comfortable with my ability to cheat the tool. I need the restriction.   I got a personal trainer and committed myself to it.   I am now 6 weeks in. I have lost about 24 net pounds but need to track inches (stop it!) as I know that the workouts are changing my body more than the scale is reflecting. I am, for the first time in my life, planning my life around my workouts.   I will drop a note when I have something really cool to report but for right now I am stoked about that exercise change. The diet side will lead to the weight loss most directly but the exercise will start to compound it. For those interested, I work out with a trainer on Monday and Wednesday for 1:15 minutes. We do a combination of cardio, weights and circuit training with a pretty significant focus on core. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays I do his Bootcamp which is:   Tuesday: Sparticus Circuit. 10 exercises. 45 sec to 1 min on then move. Three sets followed by an ad circuit. Thursday: Sand day. Conditioning, sprinting and footwork all in a sand pit. Wrap with abdominal circuit and arms (Push Ups and Dips) Saturday: Mixed bag. This day can be running, ladder drills, circuits. It really depends on the weather.   All the exercises can be modified for different levels of ability. It has been truly amazing to start to MISS workouts and try and plan work and vacation around them. If you can contact someone locally and work out a plan to start you really should. It took about 3 weeks for me to convert over to wanting to do it instead of having to but now that I have, I don't really want to stop.   Anyway, wanted to get back into the swing of writing. Hope you are all well.
OldSchool76

OldSchool76

2
 

Epic FAIL!

OK, so I am not someone who blames others for pretty much anything. That may not be fair, or accurate, but my arrogance about my own control over the world in which I live kind of allows me to move forward in life. So imagine my disappointment when, after a mere 7 months on the program I had hit 100 pounds lost only to wake up after the holidays and have gone only backwards!   I was pissed!   The funny part is that I knew who to be pissed at: Me.   I know how to use this tool (the band)   The tool itself, will work.   The problem is that I have been cheating.   I skipped the holidays on a conscious move and that was a HUGE mistake. I got back into bad habits that, thanks to the band, I could not slide too far into. That being said, instead of losing my 1-2 pounds per week, I have slowly gained 11 pounds.   So the system I used is back as I come up on my one year anniversary. My weight loss is now average for the time invested and by god, I hate being average! I know the odds are against me as the second 100 pounds has got to be harder than the first, but I will be damned if my own laziness will sabotage me.   I got a fill today (9.9/14 cc band) and have two days of fluids/mushies for a kickstart. I walked two miles at lunch and plan to do three more tonight. I have a chart on my office wall to track my total exercise and plan to go back to my solid meal planning.   I write this as a public acknowledgement of my own (temporary) failure. I hope I can live up to my plan.   I am the only one who can make that happen.
OldSchool76

OldSchool76

2
 

Meals and Workouts (Draft stuck)

After my last blog post, I was asked to share what I have been eating and doing to get where I am now (which is still roughly 100 lbs away from where I need to be, but still a long way on a pretty rapid track). Now I am no expert but I follow instructions pretty well and consider myself a normal dude with normal needs/desires (around food).   Breakfast My band is tight in the AM. I typically have a protein shake (Costco, Premier Nutrition - 160 cal and 30 g of Protein)
If I am hungry later in the AM, I have a protein bar. This gets the lions share of my protein out of the way efficiently. I have tried about 6 different bars but think that the Zone bars, while higher in calories, offer the best flavor. Pure Protein are pretty good too. (Avg 190 Cal and 15 g of Protein)
  Lunch My staples at lunch are a tuna salad made with cream cheese, lemon juice and liquid smoke (4-6 oz)
Chicken salad made with a Publix Rotisserie chicken, mayo, mustard, tarragon and kosher salt (same serving size). Both seem to average around 300 Cal and about 30g protein and pack a surprising punch to hunger as they are pretty dense but easy to digest.
High Protein Chili
  Dinner My most normal meal, we usually have a basic protein (fish, chicken, beef) and a vegetable. Occasionally, I will have a starch, but they leave me hungry so I typically avoid them. The multigrain coated tilapia at Costco is nice and easy. I target 400 Calories at dinner and a quantity of 6-8 oz.
  Snack (One of these) Sugarfree pudding
Coffee (with fancy creamer)
Popsickle
Couple of slices of protein (ham, turkey)
  I am pretty simple, so repetition does not bother me. I still enjoy a trip to Hooters (or Winghouse) but when I do, I usually get the fish (blackened) or Chili. I will have wings from time to time as I love them. I just try and watch it. Other tasty items are nuts and cocktail shrimp. If I wake up late enough, I find scrambled eggs very useful though harder to digest as I tend to eat them too quickly.   Workout Despite my size, I have always been a fairly athletic guy. I knew that at this caloric intake I would need to force my body to use up fat stores. I try to walk at least 2 miles at least 4 times per week. I do this in my Sketchers Shape Ups which, while a little goofy at first, seem to really work. After I lost my first 50 lbs, I picked up a set of 10 lb leg weights. I alternate using them on my ankles and on my wrists. When I have them on my wrists, I typically do arm exercises throughout the walk (I do this at night as not to me arrested or ostracized).   I have a weight machine and try to do 3 workouts per week. They are simple and fairly focused. I do bicep curls, tricep pushdowns, lateral pulldowns and seated row. I mix them up and try to chose 2 per workout, 3 sets of 11 reps each with increasing weights. This is AMAZINGLY unscientific and I am quite certain that I am not being efficient here. My rationale is something is better than nothing and while i have no need for more leg muscle (carrying 450 lbs around for decades has helped me build that on its own), upper body muscle is a need area.   Last but not least, I try to throw in some anaerobic stuff like basketball, yardwork or any sport with my son.   I hope this is useful. It is a mind dump but I figured it might be useful.
OldSchool76

OldSchool76

6
 

Meals and Workouts

After my last blog post, I was asked to share what I have been eating and doing to get where I am now (which is still roughly 100 lbs away from where I need to be, but still a long way on a pretty rapid track). Now I am no expert but I follow instructions pretty well and consider myself a normal dude with normal needs/desires (around food).   Breakfast My band is tight in the AM. I typically have a protein shake (Costco, Premier Nutrition - 160 cal and 30 g of Protein)
If I am hungry later in the AM, I have a protein bar. This gets the lions share of my protein out of the way efficiently. I have tried about 6 different bars but think that the Zone bars, while higher in calories, offer the best flavor. Pure Protein are pretty good too. (Avg 190 Cal and 15 g of Protein)
  Lunch My staples at lunch are a tuna salad made with cream cheese, lemon juice and liquid smoke (4-6 oz)
Chicken salad made with a Publix Rotisserie chicken, mayo, mustard, tarragon and kosher salt (same serving size). Both seem to average around 300 Cal and about 30g protein and pack a surprising punch to hunger as they are pretty dense but easy to digest.
High Protein Chili
  Dinner My most normal meal, we usually have a basic protein (fish, chicken, beef) and a vegetable. Occasionally, I will have a starch, but they leave me hungry so I typically avoid them. The multigrain coated tilapia at Costco is nice and easy. I target 400 Calories at dinner and a quantity of 6-8 oz.
  Snack (One of these) Sugarfree pudding
Coffee (with fancy creamer)
Popsickle
Couple of slices of protein (ham, turkey)
  I am pretty simple, so repetition does not bother me. I still enjoy a trip to Hooters (or Winghouse) but when I do, I usually get the fish (blackened) or Chili. I will have wings from time to time as I love them. I just try and watch it. Other tasty items are nuts and cocktail shrimp. If I wake up late enough, I find scrambled eggs very useful though harder to digest as I tend to eat them too quickly.   Workout Despite my size, I have always been a fairly athletic guy. I knew that at this caloric intake I would need to force my body to use up fat stores. I try to walk at least 2 miles at least 4 times per week. I do this in my Sketchers Shape Ups which, while a little goofy at first, seem to really work. After I lost my first 50 lbs, I picked up a set of 10 lb leg weights. I alternate using them on my ankles and on my wrists. When I have them on my wrists, I typically do arm exercises throughout the walk (I do this at night as not to me arrested or ostracized).   I have a weight machine and try to do 3 workouts per week. They are simple and fairly focused. I do bicep curls, tricep pushdowns, lateral pulldowns and seated row. I mix them up and try to chose 2 per workout, 3 sets of 11 reps each with increasing weights. This is AMAZINGLY unscientific and I am quite certain that I am not being efficient here. My rationale is something is better than nothing and while i have no need for more leg muscle (carrying 450 lbs around for decades has helped me build that on its own), upper body muscle is a need area.   Last but not least, I try to throw in some anaerobic stuff like basketball, yardwork or any sport with my son.   I hope this is useful. It is a mind dump but I figured it might be useful.
OldSchool76

OldSchool76

0
 

FINALLY! 100 Pounds gone...another 100 ish to go

I finally made it. My target date was July 24th (and was aggressive given the timeline and the Lapband choice instead of bypass) but this morning, on my official weigh in scale, I have lost 101 pounds! I got a small fill on Friday and upped my exercise over the weekend and that seems to have kicked me over the ledge. Now i have to make sure over this week I distance myself from this milestone and set up a new resistance level.   This next part of my journey will be highlighted by starting training to run in a 5K (gonna do the couch to 5K thing I believe). I will be walk/running a few 5K events in the interim as I build up my ability to run for prolonged periods of time.   Updates I went from a 66 Jacket to a 56 Jacket
I went from a 5/6X shirt to a 2/3X
I went from a 58/60" waist to a 46/48" waist
I am far more helpful around the house. This speaks to laziness which seems to have been tied to my previous size. Net/net, my wife likes it more!
I got to shop in a 'normal' store for clothing (albeit in their big and tall department)
  My next set of goals are: Get to "Twoterville" - I have no idea when the last time was that I weighed under 300 lbs
Shop in a REAL normal size store. (Old Navy, Eddie Bauer something like that)
Not be afraid to sit in a booth in any restaurant.
  To get there I will be upping my walking regimen, adding more weigh work (not heavy weight, but more work on the machine) and continuing to focus on my intake, aided by my bad. It is amazing to have gotten here in this time period. I got my body composition analysis on my last fill and will be blogging about those results later this week.   I hope these entries are useful to folks that are going down this road as well.
OldSchool76

OldSchool76

8
 

Late Night Musings

I am not a therapy fan (personal choice) but blogging does seem to fill that sort of role for me. So as I sit here and ingest copious amounts of fluids after my walk, I thought I would toss out my current state, weird milestones and general thoughts at this point in my LAP-BAND® journey.   As of this morning's weigh in, I am 4 pounds away from my first 100 pounds of loss. I do not go back and try and figure out my highest weight this year, but rather use the weigh in amount one first consult. I am ecstatic about this as I am pretty sure that once I get to this weight, it will be the lowest weight I have reached in my adult (Post college) life. I had a soft goal of 100 pounds lost by my 20 year high school reunion (it was convenient) and it looks like I should cruise to that with 2 weeks left. I still hardly see the difference, but friends and family are very kind and give me tons of support and kind words. I know that the clothing cannot lie and some of my clothes from before are just ridiculous now. (I have since taken them all to Goodwill)   After this milestone (which will put me at 331 pounds...yes, I was a big cat), my next milestones are as follows:     330 - I can now use Wii Fit
300 - I have not been sub-300 since high school
286 - This is the next level of obesity (Severely). At least that one sounds logical.
250 - My old WW lifetime goal and really, as far as I can see ahead.
  the band has been an amazing tool thus far. I am still learning how best to use it and trying to make sure that I am doing my part through exercise, but for the first time in my life I feel as though I am headed in the right direction and cannot see the event that will trigger my fall of the wagon.   Some things I have learned   These are my observations. YMMV.   Fills rock. They suck at first, but each time I get one I get a good burst of weight loss and learn more about what restriction feels like.
I don't really miss food. Sure, I wish I could have a all u can eat lobster-fest every once in a while, but normally, I can have a small portion of almost anything and be happy.
The docs were right. 8/10 times when I feel hungry, a drink makes it better (no, not a vodka tonic)
Exercise makes the difference. I walk and workout as often as I can and it seems to be making a huge difference.
Premier Nutrition shakes from Costco are delicious and get 30g of protein out of the way FAST.
Eating out, while possible, is a pain in the ass. Even when I do a good job, I seem to retain water.
Sketchers Shape-Ups, while REALLY goofy looking, seem to give me a better workout when I walk.
Buying new clothes can be an awesome experience. I look forward to having to donate this last batch to someone else.
  I hope your journeys are proceeding on target. I am a little amped as I walk/jogged roughly a 5K tonight and plan to start psuedo training for a real 5K soon. Not that I like to run (unless chased of course) but thinking that I could actually run that far is exhilarating.
OldSchool76

OldSchool76

5
 

Plateaus Suck

DISCLAIMER I have been very fortunate. I have worked the plan since being banded and lost weight at a very accelerated rate. I know this. So I know my bitching now may fall on deaf ears but I wanted to put it out there. END DISCLAIMER   When you get used to seeing that weight move every other couple of days, going two weeks with no movement BLOWS! I am within 10 pounds of my first hundred pound loss (and yes, I need another C NOTE to get to where I want to be and even then I will be obese by medical standards). I have fluctuated between 340.1 (bitter about the scale)and 344.8 for the last two weeks.   I am not posting this for advice as I am 99.9% sure I know the problem. What I am saying is that for fellow bandsters, if this has happened to you, I hope your cause is the same as mine. It is easy to diagnose and easier to fix.   I have gotten lazy.   1. Not measuring things accurately 2. Pushing past my 'soft stop' when eating 3. Eating foods that are more calorie and fat dense 4. Not exercising as regularly or as vigorously   These are the reasons. No mystery. No conspiracy. Just my own laziness. I am back on it today. I have a target, dammit, and that is 100 pounds by July 22nd. It will not be easy as 9 pounds in just over two weeks, even for a guy my size, is no walk in the park, but by using this tool (the band) and the other tool (me, as I am now referenced as a 'tool' for wasting two quality weeks on bad habits) I will get it done.   So to all you fellow losers out there (meant that in a WW good way), keep it up! I am back in this damn fight full force. I have a long way to go!
OldSchool76

OldSchool76

5
 

Is this what real "Restriction" feels like?

OK, so I planned to go back and do these in some linear fashion, but there is something I need to speak about. I recently had my third adjustment. I have been doing very well, losing weight at a good rate and really having no problems to speak of. As I get closer to an appointment, I notice that I can 'cheat' more and that triggers me to get my backside in for a fill. Well, this last fill is kicking my ass!   I only ended up with a little less than a 1cc fill (bringing me to around 7 cc out of my 14cc band) but since then, that whole cheat zone is GONE! I have had more regurgitation at this level than in all the time previous. Now before you say, "Get thee to thine Doctor chubby!" realize that I am the one to blame here. I feel the 'soft full' and plow through it because I always could. Even under my new, much smaller portion sizes, the occasional cheat was easy enough to execute. Now, I am quite certain that 4 - 6 oz target is the max.   Am I being an idiot? That seems to be what the Doctor wanted. I am not, strictly speaking, hungry past that point but socially, this becomes a mild struggle. Oh well, I am on the road which makes all of this harder. I will see how a week at the home base will do for this.
OldSchool76

OldSchool76

2
 

Early Changes - The Pre Op Diet

I was huge. I weighed in at 431 pounds (and was probably lighter by about 20lbs than I had been in a while). I knew that the Doctor would want me to lose some weight before surgery as a 2 week pre-op diet was part of my particular surgeon's best practices. At my initial consult, the Doc weighed me in and after some review, assigned me a 14 pound loss target (Go/No Go). I was self pay, so my timeline was accelerated. I was to drink two shakes per day and have one sensible meal (yea, I enjoyed the irony of that as well).   First off, the shakes were to be mixed in water. I suspected that might suck and wouldn't you know it, it did. But I reckoned that I could do ANYTHING for two weeks. So my Magic Bullet (the BLENDER!) and I became fast friends.   What I noticed was after the first week, the meals were not as critical. The weight was coming off (funny what a 1200 calorie diet will do to you) and my energy level was acceptable given the duration I had to endure. I stayed with basic, low calorie proteins and vegetables at dinner and was all in all, a damn good patient.   At the end of the 2 weeks I had lost in excess of the target and was greenlit for surgery. While that was the goal, the reason for the post is as follows:   1. The pre-op diet is not as hard as you may believe. You are simply angry that your lifestyle is being changed in exactly the ways that have never worked for you over the long haul before. Suck it up and count down the days. There is no easy way to tackle it and to cover it in candy and flowers is not empowering but condescending. 2. It is medically necessary and jump starts your new journey. You have work to do. The band is a tool but you have to learn skills like portion control (which it will help with) so doing this for a short duration is a great boot camp and when combined with the the first few weeks post involving fluids does a great job of de-emphasizing food as a pleasure center or reward and re centering you on using it as energy. 3. The psychological battle, for me, is the toughest part. The social interactions. The expectations of your social network around consumption that you may not even be aware of. Using this time to strategize your next phases was critical for me to get into the interactions that life offers.   So, while a pain in the ass, I think the pre-op diet is a GREAT tool and not something to be worked around over or through to minimize change. If you are taking this step, embrace it and use all of the aspects of the process toward your end goal.
OldSchool76

OldSchool76

4
 

Why?

Having been fat my whole life (well, the parts I can remember) I knew that at some point my run of good luck on the health side would run out. I had been fortunate to have only Sleep Apnea as a co-morbidity so I enraged my Doctors by being over 400 lbs and still maintaining great BP and blood work (and being surprisingly cardiovascularly capable according to a trainer I worked with).   Well, as life does, things changed. My wife and I had a son and as he grew I realized that what was somehow acceptable to me (being this large) would not be acceptable to me with and for him. I gave myself a deadline to get this done by myself as I had lost in excess of 100lbs previously (through WW and Low Carb diets in the past). January rolled around and I had not gotten the job done. I had already done research on the procedures and had recently watched a friend's father have laproscopic gastric bypass and enjoy tremendous results.   My wife and I went out and attended a few seminars to narrow our Doctor choices and then moved forward. I was to go first and if I did not die (that is a joke) she would go next. We chose Dr. Tiffani Jessie for the procedure and were self pay so the lead time was minimal. I had only ever been through one surgery (emergent appendectomy) but that experience had tainted my view of surgical procedures. That fear crept in but I knew I was doing this so that one day my son's friends would not comment to him about how fat his dad was and so that I could obtain life insurance that would help protect my family in the event of a catastrophe. These goals were more important than anything.   With that as the background, the team in Dr. Jessie's office prepared me. I went through the mundane nutrition seminar, the useless (for me) psych eval and the required pre-testing. The event was upon us and I was scared.   Fast forward 2 hours (of which I believe only 45 minutes was actual surgery time) and my band was installed! I felt fine and was ambulatory within 30 minutes. The procedure was amazingly simple. In fact, had I know it would be that simple I may have made what I feel was a life changing decision years earlier.   My weight loss has been outstanding. Recovery was simple and straight forward. This process, even with the goofy bits, has been a life changer so far. I am now eligible (and will soon have) life insurance. I am nowhere near my long term goal but am headed in the right direction and have every confidence that I will get there. Sooner rather than later.
OldSchool76

OldSchool76

1
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