Category Archives: Weight Loss

The 100 Workout #WLS #VSG

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92 Days until my 1 Year Surgiversary!

Like a lot of other bloggers, I have a mild obsession with Pinterest.  I love the whole idea of the site, and I love being able to gather so many great ideas in an organized manner.  I’ve gathered what is probably 100′s of ideas at this point.  Some of them I’ve been great about following through on, and others I haven’t.  I am currently in a phase of trying a “pin” everyday or every day or two.  It adds some fun to your life to try new things!

On Monday I had a telecommuting day, and I was perusing the Fitness category and came across the 100 Workout:

I’m not entirely sure of the origin, but the “pin” links you to Lauren Conrad’s website.  Since Monday was a rainy blah day, I didn’t want to have to head up to the gym, so I figured I’d give this a try.  It was a lot tougher than I originally thought it would be, but it was a fun challenge.  It took me 24 minutes and 32 seconds and according to my HRM I burn 238 calories.  Not too shabby for less than 25 minutes of work.  I will definitely work on getting my time down.  It was also great to know that I could hop on the treadmill and run 10 minutes without issue.  It’s been quite some time since I’ve run, though I’ve been killing other workouts and the elliptical.

What’s your favorite quick workout?

Tata for now,

Scale Warfare

Nine Month “Surgiversary” #WLS #VSG

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93 Days until my 1 Year Surgiversary!

Nine months seems like it should be a big milestone, I guess really every three months feels big.  It is a quarter of a year after all.  If you’ve read any of the more recent posts, you know that the last month or two have been WEAK when it comes to weight loss, tracking truthfully, and letting the bad things slip in.  The last couple of months I’ve been rocking the work outs though, so I haven’t gained weight, yay!

I can eat basically anything I want now, with the exception of trying to go gluten free due to a recent allergist appointment.  It’s both a blessing and a curse that my sleeve will let me put almost anything in it.  I can handle social situations like a champ, I no longer feel like the freak eater in the bunch.  It’s only noticeable to the people who know that I had surgery that I eat any differently.  I just eat way smaller portions than most people.

Physically I feel absolutely amazing most days, my new normal is just tiny portions.  I can eat more at a time now that I could in the beginning obviously.  I can normally eat 3-4 oz of dense proteins such as chicken or steak, and 4-5 oz of things like fish (less dense proteins.)  I absolutely can not eat protein and then drink or I throw up, that lesson has been learned a couple of times now.  Soups REALLY fill me up, so I’ve been having those for lunch recently.

If you’d like to catch up on other months in my journey they are below.

One Month Surgiversary Post

Two Month Surgiversary Post

Three Month Surgiversary Post

Four Month Surgiversary Post

Five Month Surgiversary Post

Seven Month Surgiversary Post

Below are photos from surgery day and then photos from 9 months post op. (FYI If you want to see all progress photo’s here’s a link.)  There’s not much difference between the 7 Month and 9 Month photos, but the difference between the pre-op photos and 9 months is huge.  I’m still not sure what my extra skin status will be.  There are certain ways that if I bend I can see in the mirror droopy skin, I’m not sure how or when or if even if that will stretch back.  We shall see!

Photo’s from 8/22 (Day of Surgery)

Photo’s from 5/22 (Nine Months Post-Op)

 

Measurements

I forgot to take pictures before I started the pre-op diet, but I did take my measurements the day that I started the two week pre-op diet.  The numbers below include changes since 8/8, the day I started the pre-op diet.

I only take measurements from one side of my body, some choose to take measurements from both and wind up with much higher numbers.  I suppose I’m lazy about measuring!

  • Waist: -12 3/8″ (-1/2″ this month)
  • Hips: -10 5/8″ (-3/8″ this month)
  • Right Thigh: -6 3/8″ (-3/8″ this month)
  • Right Calf: -3 3/8″ (-1/2″ this month)
  • Left Bicep: -3 1/8″ (-0″ this month)
  • Neck: -2 3/4″ (-1/8″ this month)
  • Chest Under (ribcage/bra band area): 9 1/2″ (-1/4″ this month)
  • Chest Over (cup size): -9 11/16″ (-1/2″ this month)
  • Total Lost: -57 13/16″
  • Pre Op Weight Loss -12.8lbs
  • Month 1 Weight Loss -20.8lbs
  • Month 2 Weight Loss -16.6 lbs
  • Month 3 Weight Loss -12.4 lbs
  • Month 4 Weight Loss -10.2 lbs
  • Month 5 Weight Loss -10.0 lbs
  • Months 6-7 Weight Loss -17.8 lbs
  • Months 8-9 Weight Loss -6 lbs
  • Total Weight Loss -106.6 lbs (-93.8 lbs Post Op)
It’s pretty obvious that the weight loss has slowed down.  Part of that is thanks to some stalls, part of that is thanks to jelly beans, and part of that is thanks to things just slowing down because I’m getting a bit smaller.  While I’d love to continue having double digit months, I am content that the scale and measurements both keep moving down, even if its just a little bit at a time.

Tata for now,

Scale Warfare

 

Fat Days and Skinny Days #WLS #VSG

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94 Days until my 1 Year Surgiversary

I’ve been having a lot of fat days lately.  You know those days that no matter what, you just feel fat.  Granted, I am still technically obese, so maybe I should feel like this more often.  I’ve been feeling like I still weigh 300+ pounds lately though, which isn’t great for my self image.  I feel blah in all of my clothes, I feel rooley poley like, Pillsbury Doughboy like even.

It’s strange to get on the scale and see a number less than 200, but to look in the mirror, and walk around in my body feeling like I’m 110 pounds or so more.  I was feeling awesome for a while, actually feeling quite a bit smaller than I actually am.  I want that feeling back.  I’m not sure how to make that happen.  Perhaps I need to mix up my workouts some, or change up how I’m handling my food.  I have no idea.

Sorry for the Debbie Downer post, I’m just feeling really blah.

Tata for now,

Scale Warfare

Perfectly Productive Sundays #WLS #VSG

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95 Days until my 1 Year Surgiversary!

Today I woke up early after a late, late night celebrating at our neighborhood block party.  It was a huge success, and everyone enjoyed all of the activities that we set up and the raffles that we had.  Food was extremely hard to track from Saturdays festivities, but luckily I can only have a bite or two of things anyways.  Thank you sleeve!

I started my day in one of my favorite weekend ways, with breakfast and Pinterest!  Today I spent some time looking up Gluten Free recipes while preparing my grocery list.

After breakfast was done, I headed out to Target, Wegmans, and Ross to pick up a few needed items and this weeks groceries.  Once I got home I got to work.  As much as I wanted the full 100 days prior to my 1 Year Surgiversary to go perfectly, food hasn’t been 100% on point.  I wanted to get that nipped in the bud ASAP, so I decided to get my kitchen super organized and prepared for the week ahead.  No excuses, 95 days left, I need to get my ‘ish together.

I made a pot of the Black Bean Soup with Chicken Sausage from Fitness Magazine that is a staple for me.  I LOVE this soup.  I will be posting the recipe for it later in the week.  I also made a pot of the old stand by Taco Soup.  I cooked up a batch of Quinoa to prepare for one of the Gluten Free recipes that I am trying later in the week that I found on Pinterest.  I prepared a dinner menu for each day of the week, taking into account which nights I have later classes at the gym.

I feel so organized and productive!  I love Sundays like this.  Off to work on the laundry and to take a bike ride to enjoy the amazing weather that we are having!

Tata for now,

Scale Warfare

Costco Roasted Chickens #WLS #VSG

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96 Days until my 1 Year Surgiversary!

One of my 100 day countdown to my 1 Year Surgiversary was to post everyday.  This is going to be one of those posts with not a lot of content, sorry!

Food find!

I have bought roasted chickens from the deli before, and have yet to be impressed with any of them.  I’ve tried different flavors and different stores (Wegmans, Whole Foods, Giant, Sutton Place Gourmet, etc.) all to no avail.  I’ve thought about picking them up at Costco, but they’ve either been out, or I wasn’t going to get home in time to properly refrigerate it.  This week the stars aligned and I picked one up.  It was only $4.99, so reasonably priced.  I got it home, and then proceeded to pull it apart.  I removed the skin, the bones and then chopped up the meat and stuck it in tuperware to eat throughout the week.

HOLY BALLS BATMAN this is one moist roasted chicken!  The flavor is fantastic, and even as the week went on, and I microwaved the chicken, it still stayed moist.  My guess is there is some serious brining going on with their birds, but I am probably going to wind up making this a weekly purchase.  Perfect for lunches, snacking, super quick dinners, and high in protein.

Image Credit

Costco isn’t paying me, this is just my honest opinion.  Survey says: NOM NOM!

Tata for now,

Scale Warfare

Allergy Testing #VSG #WLS

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96 Days until my 1 Year Surgiversary!

This post is entirely NOT about WLS or VSG, shocking, I know.

Friday I realized that I had an allergy appointment thanks to a reminder from my iPhone, I am so glad that I had the reminder set!  I was diagnosed with IBS, oh I don’t know 8 or 10 years ago, and I’ve been having some other issues more recently, some longer than others. To put it nicely, some days I can’t stop going and then there are days or longer that I can’t go at all. One of the non-bathroom issues is that when I bake with flour, I get incredibly itchy and sneeze a LOT.  I’m itchy on my arms, my trunk, upper thighs, neck, face, and scalp.  I’m itchy from about 15-20 minutes after I’m done with the flour and then for another day or two.  I don’t really get a rash, just really really irritated.  So between the sneezing and itching, I knew something was going on.

I felt a bit ridiculous at the allergists office because I was by far the oldest person in the waiting room there for testing.  There were a lot of Moms my age, but the kids were the ones there for testing.  The allergist tested me for a wheat allergy, then a few others that I’ve had issues with in the past, and then some random ones.  Results:

  • I have a contact allergy to wheat.  What does this mean?  Well all of the things that I described above when I work with wheat products, my biggest reaction comes from wheat flours.  I can bake with a dust mask and use gloves and wear long sleeves to try to prevent the issue.  I think that all seems ridiculous, but as I sit her typing this ready to itch my scalp and arms off, they might be onto something.
  • I’m very allergic to cats.  Not really shocking since I can’t spend more than 15 minutes in someones house that has a cat without needing Benadryl
  • I’m a tiny bit allergic to dogs.  The doc thinks that since I live with a 100 pound furry beast, my body has probably figured out how to fight this allergy pretty well.
  • I’ve been allergic to coconut for a very long time, a little bit I do OK, but more than a little bit I get hives and itchy everywhere.  So I’ve avoided coconut for years.  I did pop a little bit on the scratch test for coconut, but he thinks I can probably give it a try without any worries, just a little at a time.  I’ve been adding coconut oil when I cook some things without any issue, so hopefully I can start adding the coconut meat in too!
  • Tree and grass pollens were a moderate response.  I take a Zyrtec daily, this covers this issue for me.

So I brought the IBS up to the doctor, since my contact wheat allergy showed a pretty big response on the scratch test, and if it’s happening on the outside, what is going on, on the inside?  He said he couldn’t believe that no one had ever told me to try a wheat free/gluten free diet.  (In fully disclosure I did have a doctor tell me that, right when I was diagnosed with IBS, I just didn’t listen to them..shocking.)  So for the next 6-8 weeks, I am supposed to follow a wheat free/gluten free diet.  I seriously thought that the Gluten Free diets and products were a fad.  Perhaps they are for some people, but since 1 in 4 people are wheat or gluten sensitive/intolerant, it’s not just hoopla.  If the next 6-8 weeks doesn’t resolve some of my issues, we will know it’s not wheat or gluten.

Just when I figure out how to live with a sleeved stomach, now I get to throw something else into the mix.  I downloaded a few books to my Kindle about wheat and gluten, and also downloaded a handy application to my iPhone that has a pretty comprehensive list of foods.  The app has a check mark by foods that are OK for those who are wheat sensitive or intolerant and an X by the foods that are not OK.  This is specifically helpful, because there are so many chemicals (food colorings, binders, etc) that have gluten in them.

I decided to start this on Monday.  Why?  BECAUSE DIETS START ON MONDAY!  Actually, the real reason is because we have a big neighborhood party on Saturday that everyone brings a dish to.  I can survive through this for a day or two more.  I don’t have Celiac’s disease (a true internal/digestive wheat allergy,) so waiting a day or two won’t result in weeks or months of tummy issues.  Sunday I plan to do a week menu and then grocery shop so that I am all stocked up for my first week.

Anyone else have wheat or gluten issues?

Tata for now,

Scale Warfare

Donating Clothes #WLS #VSG

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97 Days until my 1 Year Surgiversary!

For most of my life, or at least adult life, I’ve had numerous sizes in my closet that I could go to as my weight went up and down thanks to dieting/working out/life style changes, what have you.  When something got to big it got put in the back of the closet.  Now when I try something on and its too big, it immediately goes into the donate pile for a trip to Salvation Army.  Here is the most recent pile-o-stuff to head over to be donated.

The pile might not seem huge, but it took up two lawn bags.  The pile includes:

  • 3 Sports Bras (they were hardly used, so I am donating them, usually I wont donate that sort of thing.)
  • 1 skirt
  • 8 pairs of slacks/jeans
  • 7 pairs of workout pants
  • 1 hoodie sweatshirt
  • 11 tank tops
  • 2 oxfords
  • 2 blouses
  • 6 cardigans or sweaters
  • 5 t-shirts

I’m sure the hubs is going to be happy to see this pile finally move off of our bedroom floor.  One of the oxford shirts was never even worn, tags are still on it!

 

WIAW-What I Ate Wednesday Post #VSG #WLS

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98 Days until my 1 Year Surgiversary!

 

6AM Protein Shake (w/ AM Vitamins)

Remembered it was Wednesday and I needed to snap pictures of my food AFTER drinking my protein shake, oops!

10AM Breakfast-Egg, Egg White, 1/4 cheese, 2 Tbsp Salsa

Lunch 12:30PM-3 oz Deli Turkey, 2 Slices Sharp Cheddar, 1/2 Tbsp Mayo, 2 Pickle Slices

Took about 30 minutes to eat this.

Afternoon Snack-1/2 Cup Raspberries with Stevia, 2 oz Fresh Mozzarella

Dinner 7:30PM-10 Crackers, 15 Carrots and Snap Peas, 1 Glass Champagne, 1 glass Red Wine

No dinner pictures, it was girls night!

Tata for now,

Scale Warfare

Hunger? #WLS #VSG

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This was supposed to publish yesterday, but I got my dates mixed up, opps!

99 Days to Go!

A lot of post ops have either no hunger at all, or their hunger is dramatically reduced post op.  I’m not talking about head hunger here, I’m talking about true, stomach growling, feed me before I pass out hunger.  The past 3-4 weeks, I’ve been feeling more and more hunger.  Yesterday I found myself doing a lot of reading on what is causing the hunger (mainly because I was ready to eat the arm off of the next person to pop their head in my cube.)  Is it acid?  It seems like a lot of post VSG’ers find that the real cause of their increased hunger is acid related, so they either add a PPI (like Prilosec) or they increase their dosage.

If I’m 100% honest with both you and myself, my tracking has also been a bit of a joke the past 3-4 weeks.  I track 85-90% of what I eat, but that other 10-15% has been things like jelly beans, cookies, extra crackers, extra hummus, etc.  Bad for me foods, typically, but sometimes just larger quantities of the good for you foods than what I am actually tracking.  In the shift to focus on getting through the last 100 days of my first year post op in a very healthy way, I am being 100% honest in my tracking.  I think that what I will find is that my hunger isn’t actually coming back, and that perhaps its not acid, but its been the random grazing that I’ve been allowing myself to do.  I’ve slowly let some unhealthy carbs, primarily sugar, back into my diet.

The good news is that I’m not gaining weight, but the weight loss is at a serious halt.  That isn’t what I went through all of this for.   I am using this 100 days to refocus, to go back to basics if you will.  Tracking, exercising, doing the good work to get the scale moving again.  I’m going to give it a week or two to see if the hunger pangs that I’ve started to feel start going away with a refocus on perfect tracking (weighing/measuring/logging.)  If that doesn’t help, I’m going to talk to my surgeons office about upping my dose of my PPI.  Of course I’ll keep you updated!

Tata for now,

Scale Warfare

100 Days Til the One Year Mark #WLS #VSG

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On my wall calendar in my office, I have marked the number of days since surgery, and also what week I am on since surgery.  It’s strange and OCD, I am sure, but I like seeing the numbers.  Each month I add on from the previous month.  It keeps me aware of how long I’ve come since surgery.  I realized about a week ago, that I am officially 100 days away from my one year Surgiversary as of today, and I wanted to do something to commemorate the next 100 days.

Part of me wants to say “I will be at goal weight by my one year Surgiversary.”  It’s only 23 pounds away to my first goal.  I might re-evaluate at that point, but for now that’s my goal.  But I’ve also learned over the last year that at times I have very little control over what the scale does, even when I am doing all of the right things to make it move.

So what will I do for the next 100 days?

  • 100 Days of blogging.  There might not be a lot in some of the posts, but I am committing to blog ever since stinking day between now and August 22nd.  Some days might just be pictures, some days might be regular posts, some days might be food journals, but there will be a post every day.
  • Track 100% on point every day for the next 100 days.  That means even if I lick the peanut butter spoon, I need to track it.  I’d say I’m about 90% with tracking already, but there are certainly bites or nibbles that I miss.
  • Some form of physical activity every single day for the next 100 days.  This doesn’t mean I have to kill myself at the gym every day, but it does mean that I have to consciously do something active every day.  Walking the dog no longer counts L
  • Comment on at least two other bloggers posts every day for the next 100 days and comment on the current activity feed on myfitnesspal at least once a day for the next 100 days.  This one might sound strange, but reading your blogs and seeing your activity on MFP helps to keep me motivated and on point.  It also helps to keep me in the realm of weight loss and doesn’t let me drift.

That’s it.  That is what I’m going to do for the next 100 days.  Will I hit goal in that time frame?  Likely not, would I be happy if I did, ABSOLUTELY.  But I also know the reality.  Things have slowed down, things are harder now.  I think the above will help to keep me on track though!

Tata for now,

Scale Warfare