heynowkc

After struggling with the misfit flash (I loved it a lot, but after some use, it broke twice!) I returned it for a refund and got the Garmin vivosmart which is part fitness band, part smart watch. I really like it and I find the app and the website really useful/informative. Does anyone have a garmin fitness band and use the Garmin connect app with it? If so I'd love to have some buddies over there! I am heynowkc over there as well.

Also had surgery in December. I still get cravings when I am on my period. My period has been out of whack ever since having surgery though, so it seems like I have to deal with this every other day. NOT FUN! I don't think that craving sweets on your period has anything to do with ghrelin though. Maybe have some atkins bars or other protein-type snacks around that will help during those times?

Now that I am almost to the half-way point I figured I could share some pics. The before pictures were taken the 2nd and 3rd week of October and the after pictures were taken this weekend. I've lost about 158 lbs so far between the two months before surgery and post-surgery. I have to clarify. These are not the greatest pics of me!! Haha. The before pic with the pink shirt is so horrible because I only took it to weigh in at dietbet one morning. I had woken up late that day and threw on some clothes (no bra) and ran downstairs with my scale and had my mom take the picture. It is pretty much the most unflattering photo of me ever taken!! And the purple-shirt "after" pic was taken after I'd just gotten done with a 5k (that's post 5k hair after I just took my ponytail out!). I had my mom take my pic so I could text my friend to show her that my race t-shirt "sort of" fit.

@@kickboxlvr Nice. Looking good! (Even if you posted in the wrong place!)

I guess it's high time I answer my own question! Thank you ALL for your valuable input! This thread seems to be helping a lot of people. I am four months out from surgery as of last week. Pre-Surgery In the 2.5 months prior to surgery, I was doing an hour of Water aerobics anywhere from 4-6 times/week, and adding in 1-2 strength training sessions on top of that. That, coupled with a healthy ~1200 calorie diet kept me losing about 7 lbs per week on average. Post-surgery I'm sorry to say that I never really got back to that routine. Everyone says you should walk for your exercise, especially in the early months. So that's exactly what I was doing, walking around 3 times a week, with occasional water aerobics (1-2 times per week when I could get to it.) Since my weight loss has slowed (not stopped) in the past two months to about 2.5 lbs / week, (sometimes slightly more, sometimes less) I decided to mix things up and as an experiment went back to my pre-surgery workout routine. I actually did 7 ~hour-long water aerobics workouts last week. I lost 7.3 lbs! I know it's only one week, but I've decided to FORGET the walking as my primary source of exercise! It does nothing for me! I'm sticking with water aerobics one hour 5-6 times per week or more as I find time! As for WHEN I work out. Well, because I'm taking classes, I kind of have to go with whatever the schedule is at my gym. But I am excited to get to any early morning (5:30 AM) classes (I took 2 this past week.) that I can manage because if I work out early in the morning there are less distractions (social events, feeling tired from the day, traffic etc.) that will keep me from working out in the evenings. I commute, so time is precious!

I started out in a very tight 34. I am down about 150 lbs from highest weight last October and I just tried on a 26 pair of pants at the Avenue last week and they fit, but I didn't buy them. I am hesitant to buy clothes unless I absolutely need them! Luckily a huge number of my work pants were those stretchy boot cut ponte pants so I can still wear those, I just need to hem them! I think I might go ahead and buy a few pairs of 24s in those, and then hopefully once I get down to a 24 I can wear those for a long time too! Probably not as long as I have made these 34s last though! Shirts are another story. I have no real clue what I wear because shirts vary so much from store to store. Something that's a 2x in one store is as big as a 4x in another store! I will say that I have really narrow shoulders and a big belly so that makes buying shirts, erm... complicated? Haha. Sometimes a shirt won't fit around the middle so I have to go up a size, but then it is practically falling off my shoulders! I hope this ratio will even out over time!!

I don't take that long to eat but I do chew my food very carefully. Occasionally if I am distracted I might forget. But it only takes one swallow to realize my mistake! My capacity is still around 3-4 ounces of solid food (actually it's more like 3-3.5 depending on consistency). There are times when I feel full on less though. This is about where I was when I started back on solid foods and began measuring the weight of what I was eating. I am only 4 months out as of a few days ago though. The process of eating very slowly is still something I truly struggle with. I am not sure how important this is in the long term, but I constantly remind myself I need to do it. Putting it into practice is much more difficult.

I have made this before. Definitely agree that you should boil the cauliflower with broth (I use vegetable bouillon) to add more flavor! I also put a few cloves of garlic in with the cauliflower. It cooks along with it and then blends up with it for a garlic flavor. Instead of string cheese I use a half a cup of sour cream or a half a cup of buttermilk. Yum yum! I bet any kind of cheese would work. Like maybe some lite cream cheese even. Now that I am on normal foods (4 months out) I have used this to make Shepherd's pie! It works really well!

This seems normal! I had only 2 weeks notice so I was completely out of whack those first few days after finding out my surgery date. I was nervous/scared mostly because I usually have a lot of trouble with IVs and such. They did have one false attempt to get me but after that the whole experience was fine. Just be prepared and think.. it will all be over soon! (And then the next journey begins!)

Good luck! Hope you're feeling good in no time!

I think after the first day or two on the liquid/pre-op diet you will be fine. I think those first couple of days are pretty mentally/physically challenging but then you kind of get used to it. Good luck. Being prepared is the most important thing. And you can always pretend to chew with sugar free jello! Haha.

This is so great. I think the goal of one 5k a month is awesome! I feel like I should do the same thing! Haha

How often do you work out? Do you have weekly goals? What type of exercise do you do? Walking? Swimming? Strength? Cardio? How does it work for you? Does it help with weight-loss slows/stalls? I want to know everything!

My HW at the beginning of October was 491 and my weight on surgery day (Dec 17) was 422. I am sitting just under 350 right now almost 6 months from my HW and feel I have hit a slow down (not a stall) my only advice is anecdotal and that is that my weight loss slowed when I began eating two Quest bars a day instead of two shakes. I really think the sugar alcohols are to blame and am transitioning off of them doing only one a day or every other day until they are gone. I feel in the past two weeks it has really helped. We will see what this week brings. I am finishing the ones I have and then only using them in a pinch. I may PM you later as I do not have facebook and would love to keep in touch!

I had my surgery just before our winter break this past December (I work at a college library). So I didn't have to go back for 2.5 weeks. I wouldn't have felt good enough to go back after a week, but would have been fine to go back after 1.5 or 2.

A friend here recently linked me to a video where the mythbusters tested what happens if you drink diet coke and then eat mentos. The mentos did nothing, but the carbonation in the diet coke alone blew that stomach up like it was the motherfreaking fourth of July! SCARY! I definitely wouldn't recommend any kind of carbonation at all, especially after seeing that!

@@Stevehud Oh thank you for that recommendation. I am going to see if I can try them out!

@@BLERDgirl I forgot to ask. I loved the cherry larabar but didn't think it had much protein in it. What types have the most, do you know? I may end up keeping a package of quest bars around for emergencies like you with the lara bars, but I'm definitely going to start phasing them out of my regular routine as well. Maybe after year one I will get to a point where I won't need supplements on most days, but for now I think it's safer to stick to shakes and other more natural protein sources like eggs, cheese sticks and healthy meats.

You know, now that you mention it, my weight loss in the several weeks that I had been eating 2 bars per day definitely slowed. I thought it was just a part of the process but I've been trying to do shakes more often the past two weeks (not every day) and my weight loss took a serious up-tick! Maybe the quest bars are why?? Anyone else experience this? I think I'm going to have to do this too. I really do love veggies but I think I need to focus more on meat than I have been. (And here I thought I couldn't get any MORE focused on meat... LOL.) I really am going to have to look around for some shake recipes and see what works. There's a part of me that doesn't want to add anything to them because I know I'm just adding calories (even though my NUT wants me to avoid calorie counting) but I am going to HAVE to start experimenting if I'm going to be able to stomach them every day twice a day.

Well my shake is 30 grams of protein, so two of those is 20 grams more protein than 2 quest bars. Right now I am eating 3 meals a day and two protein Snacks. I think I probably need to eat mostly meat for my meals because my stomach capacity is about 3 ounces of food per meal before I feel too full and I do try and include vegetables as often as I can. So usually I have about 1.5-2 ounces of meat and then some veggies. I guess.. and I never thought I would say this, I'm eating too many vegetables. My goal for protein is 80 grams/day. But I revised that recently after reading a post here to 80-100/day. My problem, really, is that I don't always calculate protein before eating, or even before the end of the day. So I think I just need to pay closer attention and make sure to have at least one shake per day. Like yesterday, for two of my meals I had shrimp, but I only had 4 large shrimp at each meal and MFP tells me that's only 4.6 grams of protein/meal. Whoops! My total protein for yesterday was 61 and that was after going home and having an extra snack to bring it up from 51. I left one of my bars at home so that was even more disastrous than usual. But if I hadn't forgotten and eaten the bar, by the time I got home I would have still only been at 71 grams and 9 away from goal.

My instructions are to have three meals, plus two Protein "snacks" (a bar or a shake) per day. No matter what shakes I drink I find them to be nauseating, so for a while I switched to the bars (Quest bars) and was eating two of those a day, or occassionally a bar plus a shake a day. (Premier Protein Shakes.) But I'm just finding it too hard to get all of my protein in when I just do the bars so I'm switching back to shakes at least once, if not twice daily. I'm not super happy about it, but I just don't know any other way right now to get enough protein in. Some days it works out, but other days if I'm not paying attention I'm way under goal. Did anyone else find it too hard to get enough protein in when they don't drink shakes? (Or am I the only one dumb enough to have cut out shakes at all?) One thing I haven't tried is making smoothies or adding fruit to my shakes. I may have to start trying some recipes soon because I dread the shakes like you have no idea.

I'm just over 3 months out and in some ways my tastes have definitely changed. One thing I've noticed is that I'm very sensitive to very salty foods in a way that I wasn't before. I made a recipe the other day and thought it was painfully oversalted. My parents didn't think it was too salty at all. I also noticed that some cheese are just way salty for me now. Especially sharp cheddars. The only kind of cheese I've ever turned my nose up at before was Brie and Blue cheese crumbles. Now that is definitely changing. I haven't had it since surgery, but just the IDEA of Feta cheese now makes me cringe. And I used to love it before. I also noticed that certain things just don't "sit well" in my stomach so even if I might like them, I just avoid them now. Salads are still hard. I've barely tried any and don't look forward to it at all. Yogurt... even almond milk. (I am determined to try almond milk again though. I gave it up less than 2 weeks out from surgery.) I don't think much else has changed. But the thing is... I have been told by my dietitian that I just can't have many foods that I was allowed to have before, and that are a staple of most people's diets. -- Bread, oatmeal (steel cut is okay but I haven't had any), potatoes of any kind, rice, crackers, pasta, sweets, chips, tortillas/wraps, corn, beans (except edamame). I'm not missing them though, which is a good thing. But the things I'm limited on were not things that were "favorites" before except for wild rice and sweet potatoes. I kind of miss hummus and occasionally I'll walk by something sweet in the grocery store and think "oh I wish I could have a bite of that!" But because I am not even allowed to have them, I don't even know if it's something I'd like now! Maybe one day I'll find out. (Or maybe I won't. I'd be cool with that.) I do feel like sometimes we just get "used to" a taste and if we go a long time without having it we realize it's not as good as we remember. I am sure that's going to be the case with many things. I don't foresee myself going back to my old way of eating, so I will probably rarely have these types of foods, and maybe I just won't like them the next time I try them.

I'm sitting here laughing at myself because somehow I never really let my size dictate how vocal/friendly I was. I am noticing a lot of these changes are in reference to that. My brain knows I am fat, but my mouth sure doesn't! HAHAHA. Still have a long way to go. It'll be interesting to see how/if my personality changes. As for "introvert vs extrovert" I've always been an E! (ENFP.)

@@JamieLogical Yikes, I don't know if I've ever gotten 100 grams / day in! Wonder if I should worry about that. I'm just over 3 months out. When did your dietitian give you this goal? Maybe I should strive for it as well. I was told 2 protein supplements/snacks a day + 3 meals where protein comes first, then veggies. My supplements give me ~40-60 grams per day (depending on which ones I have) and then the other three meals rarely (if ever??) make up 40 more grams, let alone 60 more! How do you do it?

I was allowed to have a caffeinated beverage once per day as of 6 weeks out according to my dietitian. However! I don't drink coffee at all so my only experimentation with caffeine has been iced tea or other flavored drinks that may have a little caffeine in them.