MSinger

Month 2 is in the books! I am 8 weeks out today and weighed in this morning. Down 4lbs for the month. It's not the number I was hoping for, I had a few struggles this month and fell off the wagon a couple of times. I also had to play around with my eating program a bit, but I feel I have figured out what my sleeve needs. Eating 6x a day and limiting the number of calories I eat per meal has been working well.

Activity-wise, I'm plugging away with my daily walks. My activity tolerance is slowly improving and I'm not as dizzy as I have been, but I'm not trying to push it. I'm still heavy enough to feel small injuries. What I hope is that as I lose more weight the activity will come more easily for me. For now, I learned not to feel guilty or compare myself to others. As long as I am losing I'm doing ok. I also noticed that days I push myself too hard physically my hunger goes crazy. I'd rather take it easy on activity than to eat back all of my progress. 

Going into month 3, I feel like I have my eating program, activity program, and my food tracking figured out. I just need to stay focused and keep plugging away. I am happy that my weight is down for the month, but I'm hoping for a better loss next month. Let's do this!

Well, all the status posts on AM workouts had me in the mood to try my hand at it again. I believe this was the first time I've taken a morning walk as a post op. It went.. ok. I really loved it for the same reasons I liked it preop, but I didn't drink enough water before I headed out the door and came back home very dizzy. So I'm gonna try again tomorrow, but this time I'll make sure I'm better hydrated before going out.

Today marks 7 weeks post op! This month has not gone as smooth as last month did as far as eating on plan. I had a couple of days this month where I ate well over my calorie budget. Even though it was not nearly as much as I used to eat before surgery, it doesn't take much for me to stall.

I'm not sure of my weight loss (if any) because I'm still weighing once a month, but whatever number pops up when I weigh in next week, I am still doing better than I ever could have before having surgery. I still know that I for sure would have blown it by now as I have never been successful for more than 2 weeks. I am also taking every failure as an opportunity to learn. I realized I made bad choices in some of the foods I bought because the sugar/carb content stimulated my hunger. There are certain foods I have to stay way from if I want to be successful. Even with that, I made some adjustments and do not feel deprived at all. 

My plan is still to weigh in once a month. I feel it really makes me focus on nutrition and what I can do starting at my very next meal to be successful. When I'd weigh in weekly sometimes I'd have a week where I knew I was not eating as well as I could have, yet I still had a loss. It could have been a big poop, or pee, or dehydration, but I'd remain blissfully ignorant and loosen up on my diet the next week to celebrate. On the flip side, I had weeks where I was working hard, diet was on point, and I'd lose less than a pound, sometimes nothing, sometimes I'd gain... and it would break my spirit. Weighing in weekly is too emotional for me and I believe on some weeks it can be misleading regarding the overall trend. That's what I'm interested in now - the overall trend. If I weigh and measure everything I eat, stay on plan, then I feel comfortable weighing in once monthly for the time being.

This post is much longer than I was expecting, but lastly, I'm learning how important it is to stay positive and believe in yourself. It truly makes a difference. Preop, when I would wake up in the morning, I would always be in a terrible mood, but I'm stopping myself and changing the script now. There was a story on the radio of a famous science fiction writer. When she was initially writing her best-selling series, she would line her manuscripts with little positive mantras. She believed in herself and achieved her dream. I think all of us can do the same with the right mindset.

So I've been playing around with my eating schedule and decided yesterday that I was going to increase my meals from 5x a day to 6x a day with smaller portions. I went from 4x a day to 5x a day a few weeks ago, and it went well, but I was wondering if it might be better for me to constantly be eating, even if it is smaller amounts.

Today's the first day I'm trying it out, and I'm noticing something very strange. Even though I'm eating smaller meals, today I'm feeling MORE restriction from my sleeve. I don't know what it is... Is there a "sweet spot" where if you eat past it your stomach goes numb? I know it usually takes me a long time to feel my restriction after I've eaten, about 45minutes or so.  Anyway, I've been eating every 2hrs and for the entire day today I've been feeling full.

It's weird. I'm coming up on 7weeks out and I'm still learning how my sleeve works.

This post is an attempt at, as the kiddies say, keepin it 100...

I've decided I need to re-vamp my diet. Starting today I'm transitioning to low carb eating. I have always been extremely carb sensitive. I've always loved sweets and would spiral into terrible binges the more carbs I introduced into my diet. I've been doing ok post op since I'm focusing on getting my protein first, but over the last few weeks, I've been able to eat larger volumes of food and started introducing more carbs into my diet thinking I'd be able to control myself better. Unfortunately, I noticed I'm starting to slip.

I thought since I had my surgery that it would be ok for me to eat carbs and I wouldn't have the same food cravings since I would have restriction, but that line of thinking isn't quite working out. Carbs are easy to digest, even if it's paired with protein. The only thing my sleeve keeps me from doing is eating an ungodly amount of food all at once. I can easily eat a smaller amount several times to total an ungodly amount of food. 

This choice is tough for me, because I always wished I could be that person who eats one serving of chips and is satisfied, or has only one serving of ice cream, or one slice of bread. The "control" I think I have only lasts a few days, and then descends into me repeatedly going to the refrigerator for more food. This never happens when I'm on a low-carb diet. 

I know I have restriction because although I have been eating more food this week, it is nowhere near the amount I was eating preop. But this is not the only thing I need in order to successfully lose weight. I have to meet my sleeve halfway and focus on foods that do not stimulate my appetite the way simple carbs do. I'd love to have chips, ice cream, crackers, but those are the foods that led to where I was preop. No more. I am thankful for the help my sleeve is giving me, but it's not a complete solution. I have to do my part and choose the right foods that will help me be as successful as I can.