Looking back with a new perspective

Tomorrow marks 15 months since I had surgery. My life has changed so much during this time. Not only in the physical but in every area of my life. I have energy now to do things and I have found that I often have a hard time just sitting around the house any more. 

My two youngest kids and I have made a trip back home to visit my mom this week and the difficulty in just sitting around has become more apparent then ever. This is my second trip home since surgery. The first was back in April and during that trip there were plans to meet with old friends and things to do each day. This trip was more to focus on having some time with my mom and one of my very best friends in the world. In past trips before losing the weight I would be ok with just coming here to sit around and watch tv and eat. That is what we did when I would come home, the entire trip would be planned around hitting all my old favorite places to get pizza, slushies, and ice cream. It's really no wonder I was as heavy as I was when my adolescent years were focused around food and eating out. 

This time I have been eating only when hungry and went to the store to bring in things like Greek yogurt and light cheese and things that I can feel good about eating. Due to mobility issues with my mom we still have been primarily hanging around her house. The sitting has been making me a bit crazy but at least I know my food choices have been better and I have had the energy to do things to take care of my mom while I am here.

While I love my mom and I am grateful to have the ability to spend time here I am looking forward to being back home where I have my treadmill and other exercise equipment. In the beginning of this journey I truly hated exercise. I had gotten to where I was having a hard time even doing a few minutes on the treadmill at a zero incline. I now miss it when I can't get to it. My mom had asked me why would I still exercise when I have lost so much weight. This was so eye opening to me because that is how my attitude toward exercise used to be, why bother if you don't have to. The changes in my life and attitude continue to amaze me. 

"Normal".....who me?

Ok, so let me start off by first saying that I am not one of those folks who live and die by the BMI Chart.  I for one feel that it is not a really accurate reflection of ones health or what and I tend to rely more on body fat percentage as a measure of where I am and where I should be. 

However, with that being said this week my scale has read 150 pounds even for a few days now.  Out of curiosity I plugged my stats into a BMI Calculator and the result was 24.9 which puts me into the "Normal" range and out of the overweight category!  I have never in my entire life not been considered either overweight or obese.  Just to give a little perspective when I was at my heaviest recorded weight my BMI was 63 and I was considered morbidly obese. 

I am very close to reaching my ultimate goal weight and so that will bring a whole new set of issues with it.  I am going to have to learn how to maintain my weight.  I have never done that before.  My entire life has been either not caring what I weighed or working to lose weight.  Learning to stay steady will be a new lesson to learn.  I do believe that I will be able to handle it though.  I have developed many good habits that are just my normal now in how I deal with food and portions and choices that I make.

Size what!?!?

So I have been wearing around a size ten jeans for a little bit now and I have found this one particular style of dress pants that I really like the cut on. While I was out today I thought I would go ahead and get a pair in a size 8 to put up in hopes of wearing them at some point.  For the heck of it when I got home I tried them on and they fit! I have never in my life put on anything that was a single digit size.  It is very surreal for me to think that I can wear these.  

My life has been turned upside down the last few months and it has been hard to keep trying to focus on getting to my goal.  This accomplishment today has refuled my resolve to keep working and finish this marathon to get to where I want to be and reach my goal weight.

Here are my biggest pants compared to my new pants!

The one year check up

A few days after my one year anniversary of surgery I had my check in with the surgeons office. They had me do a swallow study to check on the reflux I was having and they said the reflux was still pretty prevalent so I have to stay on the reflux meds a while longer.  Not a huge deal in my opinion. 

I see the nurse practitioner when I go for my check ups. She was so happy with the amount of weight I have lost. According to the numbers the top range of a healthy percent of body fat is 33% and I have reached just that. She said that with sleeve surgery people generally expect to lose 60-70% of their excess body weight and I have lost 72% of my excess weight so far so at this point they consider me a success. It was good to know that I am doing well according to what the doctors have to say. 

A Year Already

Today marks my one year anniversary from having the gastric sleeve done.   I can truly say that it was the best decision I have ever made in my life.  In this year I have lost 157 pounds and now wear a size 10/12.  That just blows my mind when I think about it because I don't know that I have ever worn such a small size.  Even when I was in middle school I was wearing a 16 or 18 in clothes and I was in a 24 by the time I graduated high school.

This year has brought many good things and bad things in my life that are not related to the weight loss journey however they are things that could have totally blown me off course if I had let them.  My oldest daughter who is 18 got married.  This is a good thing, her husband is very sweet and a good guy that makes her very happy.  But, none the less my baby turned 18, graduated high school, moved out, and got married all in the month of June.  This was stressful to say the least but I had the energy and ability to deal with it all.  I am currently going through a very unexpected divorce and this has just about done me in emotionally.  And I am dealing with an aging parent who is 550 miles away and on the verge of being homebound with very little local help and she refuses to move here where all of her family is.

All of these stressors in my life could easily have sent me sailing back to a life of depression and bad habits.  Now, I will say I have not handled everything perfectly but I have done much better then I ever have before and through it all I have still managed to pretty steadily continue to lose weight and keep on the path that I set out for myself and so for that I am proud and count my one year anniversary as a success!

My stats are as follows:

Heaviest weight ever was 376 wearing a 28 pants and 30/32 top

Weight on 9/28/2015 was 319 wearing a 26 pants and 26/28 top

Weight as of today 9/28/2016 is 162 wearing a 10 pants and a large top!!

200 Pounds Gone

Yesterday morning I got up and did my normal routine of going to the bathroom, getting undressed, then getting on the scale.  Low and behold it read 176 lbs!  This means that I have lost 200 pounds from my all time heaviest weight of 376.  That is so insane to me.  I think back and often wonder how I let myself get to that point but I realize that it didn't happen overnight.  It was sneaky and it would be a splurge here and some cookie dough there and little by little I would gain a pound this week and maybe 5 pounds the next month until I was heavier then most professional football players.  I never felt like I was that big. 

I talk about the whole body dysmorphia thing now where I don't see myself for the most part as someone who is about a size 12 now and I still look at myself and see what looks to me like rolls but in reality it is all the stretched out skin left over from the damage I have done to my body.  But I can now say that looking back at the person I was at my heaviest weight, I had what I think of as the other end of the spectrum of the body dysmorphia.  Even though I was wearing like a 30 - 32 in tops and a 28 or so in pants I didn't feel like I was that big so for many years I didn't see any problem in my weight.  I didn't have any real health issues for many years and when I would have a hard time fitting into a theater seat I would just ignore the pain I felt.  I am so thankful that as I have gotten older I have come to realize that I am worth the effort of losing the weight so that I don't have to feel that pain again.  I am worth the effort of waking up every morning and stepping on that scale to keep myself accountable.  I am worth being healthy not just for my kids but for me so that I can do the things in life that I desire to do. 

Staying The Course

So my family has gone through a personal crisis over the last few weeks.  I am not going to go into the private details but it is a situation that has put us all in a bad place mentally and emotionally.  I had never thought of myself before surgery as an emotional eater but as I am now working through a major potentially life altering event that impacts everyone in my family I realize just how easy it could be to be an emotional eater.  When this event occurred two weeks ago at first I couldn't even think to eat.  I was so upset I was just sick at my stomach all the time.  After a few days I forced myself to start to eat some because if I don't eat and drink water and stay healthy I will end up making more problems because I will just end up in the hospital dehydrated and that will not help my family in the least.  Then as a few days went by I started to want to eat junk.  I started to think how good that some of the chocolate homemade moose type filling would be that I use when I make cakes.  So I made some.  But here is the thing, even though I did make a bit I only made literally two table spoons worth and that is all I allowed myself to have.  I still counted it in my totals for the day in my food tracking.  And I have still lost a few pounds in the last few weeks.  It has been hard to find the motivation to do much of anything while dealing with this situation but I have to keep reminding myself that through it all God is in control first of all, we will survive no matter what life throws at us secondly, and last of all I am worth the continued effort to get to a healthy weight and be the best I can possibly be for my family.