PhatGurl80

Hello everyone!
 
Well, I don't even know how long it's been since my last post. I know i haven't been the best at documenting my journey or updating on my status. 10 months into post-op surgery there are many things that have changed in my life. Not just the dropping of over 70lbs, but I also got married And, I wont' be looking back at my wedding photos 10 years from now cringing at how big I am.
 
I started off this journey weak and tired. I was so frustrated and angry at myself that I've actually let myself become so overweight. I was 5"6', 31years old, and weighed right at a whopping 270 lbs! I decided to get the surgery after my friend went through the process and was successful. I decided 9 months before my wedding that I better do it now if i"m going to do it.
 
Since then, I've had to learn how to live a whole new life. Although I feel like i went through a fairly easy recovery stage, eating in and of itself is still a challenge for me. I am stronger and healthier than i've ever been 10 months after surgery. With that said, my "i'm full, STOP!" receptors aren't as strong as I thought they would be. I go through daily occurrences of being overly full. I have battled extreme cases of acid reflux (which I new take a daily medication for).
 
Today I am at 197.00 which is only 22 lbs away from my final goal! I have no wedding to look forward to, but I have my whole life to look forward to. Kids...anniversaries...new homes...all that seems a bit brighter now that I have been through this process. I love me now and that's probably the best benefit that I can see coming from having the Vertical Sleeve.
 
Enjoy the picture...that is of me and my new husband

Hello everyone!
 
Well, I don't even know how long it's been since my last post. I know i haven't been the best at documenting my journey or updating on my status. 10 months into post-op surgery there are many things that have changed in my life. Not just the dropping of over 70lbs, but I also got married And, I wont' be looking back at my wedding photos 10 years from now cringing at how big I am.
 
I started off this journey weak and tired. I was so frustrated and angry at myself that I've actually let myself become so overweight. I was 5"6', 31years old, and weighed right at a whopping 270 lbs! I decided to get the surgery after my friend went through the process and was successful. I decided 9 months before my wedding that I better do it now if i"m going to do it.
 
Since then, I've had to learn how to live a whole new life. Although I feel like i went through a fairly easy recovery stage, eating in and of itself is still a challenge for me. I am stronger and healthier than i've ever been 10 months after surgery. With that said, my "i'm full, STOP!" receptors aren't as strong as I thought they would be. I go through daily occurrences of being overly full. I have battled extreme cases of acid reflux (which I new take a daily medication for).
 
Today I am at 197.00 which is only 22 lbs away from my final goal! I have no wedding to look forward to, but I have my whole life to look forward to. Kids...anniversaries...new homes...all that seems a bit brighter now that I have been through this process. I love me now and that's probably the best benefit that I can see coming from having the Vertical Sleeve.
 
Enjoy the picture...that is of me and my new husband

Tomorrow I will be 10 weeks post-op and I can't believe time has flown by so fast. I have to admit, I finally know what others mean when they said "this is not the easy way out" I struggle daily with what my brain wants to do as opposed to why my stomach WILL do. But, it gets easier as the weeks go on.
 
I was a little scared the past few weeks because since the end of the Halloween challenge I was stuck at the same weight. As of Monday (yesterday) the scale finally moved down 4.2 lbs. I was ecstatic Just when my panick of never losing any more weight set in *poof* the scale is moving again. I want to say it has a lot do with my new fitness bootcamp class. I've been going for a week now at 5am in the morning for an hour of torture. lol. But, I think this is what got the scale moving. I'm glad I joined because I can now really see how weak my abdominal muscles really are since the surgery. Before I was able to do a good amount of crunches, now I can barely get my shoulders off the floor. I know in time it will be better.
 
Well, on to what I really wanted to talk about I have a crap load of clothes in my closet that I've been holding on to for years. Some of the clothes are items that I once wore when I was a smaller size and vowed to get back into one day. Others are brand new with tag items that were too small when I bought, but swore i'd lose enough weight to fit it. Well, just out of curiosity I pulled some things out of my closet to try them on. Let's see, a summer dress that I wore two years ago (once), and was uncomfortably snug, was actually too big for me! My fiance said I'd have to take it in. Can you believe it? Me? Take in a dress?? So, I went on and tried on a sleek black pencil skirt that I used to wear for business. The last time I tried it on, I couldn't get the side zipper to even touch. Now, the zipper went up with no problem. I tried on a dress that I wore about 2 weeks before my surgery. Looking back at the pictures, I swear i looked about 8 months preggo. But when I put the dress on, IT was too big! So, i'm going to be taking in a lot of clothes it looks like! It was like going shopping, but not having to spend a bunch of money lol. I can now fit several button up shirts and other dress pants that were just in my closet collecting dust. Next round I'm going to try on my New York and Company size 14 jeans that I held on to for the last 6 or 7 years. It would make me so happy to be able to pull those up over my knees!
 
I guess I'm still in awe about the fact that I'm really losing weight. I'm so glad I did the surgery. :biggrin2:

Yesterday marked 6 weeks since my surgery and I have to say that I think I'm doing pretty well. I haven't had any follow up appointments w/ my Dr. yet. We are going to do that at my 12 week mark. Overall I feel energized. The only time I felt really drained was up to a week right after surgery and this past week when I came down with a cold. My biggest problem is just learning how to SLOW down my eating. I have started to really focus on this and I feel much better when the food goes down. I can eat little bites of anything and I still say away from breads and most carbs for now. I do plan on adding those back in at some point, but for now I don't want to overdo my sleeve. I can say that my situation right now is very normal and maybe even text book. Now hopefully my Dr. appointment doesn't come up w/ an issue (crossing finger).
 
So I was contemplating my life in the past 20 or so years in terms on my weight. I can remember going back as far as 3rd grade, i would look at the other girls' thighs when we sat Indian style (sorry "criss cross apple sauce") and thinking wow, my thighs are so much bigger. The women on my Dad's side of the family are all for the most part morbidly obese. To the point where they have very limited mobility. I grew up being terrified of turning out like that. So I always had my size at the forefront of my mind.
 
I remember in the 7th grade I weighed in at 145 lbs. Now I nkow that's a very awkward stage for everybody. But I would wake up early in the morning before school and work out to Denise Austin or that guy w/ the thick black curly hair w/ the accent. I know I was most out of wack then and it took a year or two for that to even out.
 
Highschool I think i was the most fit. I definitely didn't LOOK fat or obese, but I was a solid 175 lbs by the time i was a senior. Looking abck at all of my pictures, I surely didn't LOOK overweight. I just weighed a lot. I'm not sure why, but I guess i just had denser bones? Or maybe I really had more muscle than fat. I saw my prom picture and DAMN I looked good! So, why always the stigma of thinking I was too fat? The numbers on the scalse are misleading.
 
By the time I was out of college I was at 215. I was still bigger than a lot of women my age and hieight. But again I didn't look obese and when I had Dr. check ups, the nurses always comented how surprised they were that I weighed in as much as I did.
 
So, I finally decided not to worry about it, and in 8 years, I sky rocketed from 215 to 270. I looked at pictures and couldn't stand how fat I let myself become. Where was all that muscle? Am I really obese now? It came to realaity when the Dr's started telling me to lose weight and I have border line hypertension. I reverted back to that fear I had whne I was a little girl about not becoming like my female relatives on my Dad's side of the family.
 
I finally realized I had a problem on my hands and tried through diet and exercise turn it all around. Nothing worked. My self esteem plumeted and my depression increased. Now here I am now living with a decision i made to surgically alter my body in hopes of returning to a normal weight. 175. I'm going to look hotter in my wedding dress than I did in my prom gown.
 
Now I feel like I have a chance to back up and do all of the good things for my body I said I couldn't do because of my weight. I'm starting Yoga, Fitness boot camp, and am even going to take on my arch nemises....running. My body deserves for me to finally think highly of it and treat it with respect.
 
Sorry for the rambiling, but the thoughts were just swimming in my head and I had to get them out
 
Thanks for listening, fellow sleevers!

Yesterday marked 5 weeks post-op. I'm not officially weighing in until Monday, but I think I've lost another 2 lbs this week. At 6 weeks I'm going to do another video blog and take some pictures so I can compare them later.
 
So, I wanted to dedicate this blog entry to my one and only. My fiance. He has actually been very encouraging and supportive throughout this whole journey. When I first brought it up a year and a half ago, he told me to do what I think will make me feel better and be healthier, but he also said he loved me no matter what. I've always felt so self-concious standing next to him because he's very slim. He's 6ft 1in and weighs 186. At the start of my sleeve journey I was 5ft 6in and weighed 270. Yeah, we looked like the number "10" standing side by side lol. Again, he never had a problem w/ that...I did.
 
I told myself last fall of 2010 that instead of having an invasive surgery, I'd give one last REAL try at excercising and eating right to lose weight. Again....one last time I failed. From Fall to Spring 2011 I lost 10lbs then gained back 15. I was devistated that as many trials and tribulations that I've gotten though, this ONE thing keeps defeating me. I told my fiance in May of 2011 that I want to have the surgery, we came up w/ $5,000 because my insurance doesn't cover.
 
At no point did he ever try to talk me out of it and I think deep down he thought that it would truly make me happy. We flew to Mexico together in September and he was there every step of the way. He wanted to document everything right down to taking pictures of the partially removed stomach. We workout together. He makes me tea and broth... he's just been amazing. He and my best friend from childhood are the only ones who know about the surgery.
 
I just can't say enough about how happy I am to be marrying this man. He's accepted me before and I know he will accept me after I hit my goal. I can't wait to become the complete woman I know I was meant to be.

Today is day 11 since my surgery and honestly, i really can't see how i'm ever going to be able to eat more than just a few ounces of soup. This morning, I started out w/ an 8-10 oz protein shake and i feel like it's been sitting in my stomach aaaallll day long. I didn't even have any rooom for any liquids. I did try to sip sip sip some powerade, but it's been an all day battle and I didn't even finish half a bottle yet. I guess my sleeve has started to form a mind of it's own.
 
Over the last few days, I have been obsessed with food. Looking at food in magzines, watching the Food Network, The travel channel. It's almost as if it's soothing to watch Man Vs. Food or Chopped. I go online and look up all kinds of recipes. Is this what food depression is? I definitely don't want to go down that slippery slope and eat everything in my sight once I'm able to eat food again. I do'nt know maybe the "food porn" is helpful in some way.
 
Overall i'm still happy about the surgery and deep down I know things will get better. My fiance already commented on how he can tell I've lost 18 pounds My very first goal was to get from 269 to 249 by Oct. 31, and it looks like i'm about to blow that out of the water.
 
I will continue with my 30 minute walks after work which I think has been really helping me get my mind off this food obsession. My Dr. says that I will be fine for regular exercise at about 6 weeks, so i've already signed up for a 30 day yoga class, a 5 K , and a fitness boot camp. I figure the nicest thing I can do for my body after butchering it, is to commit to a life of activity and exercise (not to mention eating well). I owe it that much.
 
Well, i don't really have much more to say other than my scars are healing very very nicely, and overall I feel good. I know as time moves on it'll only get better and better.