Poor Me

I am still tight. It is funny because while I am drinking and before I actually try to eat anything I feel entirely normal. I feel like hmm maybe I have opened up again and I can still eat what I want when I want. Then I try to sit down to a meal and whammo I am reminded that I have a band. 4 or 5 bites later I am full and my 'snack' oh right this is all I get for this 'meal' is over. I am not liking it at this point. I do not get enough for my head to handle. It feel like less than a 1/2 cup but I think it is more like just that-1/2 cup of food per meal. I should be happy that the band is really working but I somehow feel cheated out of my beautiful, wonderful food at this point.

Additionally the scale bounced down to 250 and then immediately bounced back up to 253 It has pretty much stuck there since. It really ticks me off that I am feeling so deprived and the scale isn't plummeting down like I want. Now on a good note-my waist has decided this week to offload a bunch of fat. My jeans and shirts all of a sudden loosened and I got into a tank top my daughter as I like to call it "handed me up". She lost weight a few years ago and gave me a few of her favorite things to hang onto. This tank top is not particularly exciting but it now fits and its little tag says xl from old navy. Well-that little xl and normal store old navy has the biggest beauty impact in the world. It could have been the ugliest tank top on the planet and I would love it right now because it fits me!! Which brings me back to the problem?? geez I am losing inches, not weight, and I am not happy with the small meals. yeah stupid right?

Tina

Chasing the 240's

Yesterday I had a great time partying the evening away. DH and I went to a friends yearly memorial weekend party and then over to another friends house for drinks and a chat on the back patio next to a blazing fire in their fire grill. It felt great to just relax for a change. The food at the party went down fine the Sangria and Cosmos were tasty. By the end of the evening I was quite inebriated (so much so that when I finally laid my head to the pillow the bed did a bit of spinning). I was concerned that I was going to have to pay for my imbibing with a weight gain but as is usual, when I am naughty or have a great need to be naughty it is always followed by a nice weight-loss. I do not know why or when the other shoe will drop and I will have to pay for the fun. As of now however I will take my weight-loss and my fun together!!

The scale read 250!! I am now down a total of 54 pounds in just about 9 months. Although it is not as fast as I would have liked it is sure a lot more successful than I have ever been in my whole life and I will take it. yayyyyy hoorrayyyyyy

The rest of the weekend I shifted a truck full of compost, planted most of our seeds and seedlings and provided the occasional hand to my husband who is building our backyard fence. Now if I can keep my grandson and the remaining cat out of the raised beds (seems to think it is a handy litter box). I will be soon seeing little seedlings rise above the dirt.

Weird Gut!

So after an extremely tight few days and a re-loss of 5 pounds I am discombobulated by this band-o-mine. Today I managed to eat 1/2 cup of cottage cheese over a full 20 minutes, could only eat 1/4 cup of chicken enchilada soup and managed a few tasty samples, very carefully chewed and swallowed at Costco. For dinner I had two bites of tuna salad and then about 30 minutes later had the rest of the half-cup of the stuff. ahem...I did eat a few starburst candies (leftovers from the math class I taught earlier this week).

Then tonight after watching the cooking shows my husband is obsessed by (This time Alton Brown on popcorn) I had the biggest craving in my life for some popcorn. I have always kept it on hand and in fact back in my Weight Watchers days I lived on the stuff at 2 points for a big bag. So I went in to my crazy plan with some trepidation. My paperwork suggests that bandsters might have difficulty eating popcorn-along with asparagus and pineapple and I can't eat them any more. So I popped a minibag of kettle corn popcorn in my microwave and took my first kernel, gave it a long chew and it went down fine--one kernel at a time and one mini-bag later I downed the bag with no difficulty and If I were a betting wo'man' I would say that popcorn is a slider food!!! It was the biggest meal I have had in days and I have to say...it made me feel a whole lot more satisfied.

Soooo popcorn is my new best friend :) A bit of carb. A bit of sweet or salt whichever I choose. and I can have a few moments of volume again. I vow I will only eat the 94% fat free variety so as to limit the damage-heck it is a lot better than candy and ice-cream. These two have become the vice foods I fall into when im feeling very, very naughty and rebellious.

The 5 pounds-Post surgery I dropped quite a bit of poundage but following my daughters graduation, a reduction is stomach swelling as I healed and my monthly curse I had gained 7 pounds from my all time low. This morning I have taken 5 of those pounds back off again and I am looking forward to the reamining 2 plus more and into the 240's soon I hope.

I have said quite a few times that I woud post pictures-I am not shy really nor do I love pics of myself though either. Frankly the hold up has been the fact that I have no flipping clue how to upload pics and on top of that I don't have any pictures of myself on my little computer (they are all on my old broken down one and on those of my children and husband). I will try..yeah i know here she goes again wth the empty promises...to do something about the lack of pics for your viewing pleasure.

Oh I'm Tight

It has been two days since my fill and holy moly I'm tight. This morning I have eaten a protein bar (it is not sitting very well). I am having allergy problems and want desperately to take my little sudafed pill but I cannot until the food clears. It is not clearing.

I actually pushed a pill out and threw it into my mouth, and chased it with water before it dawned on me that I had better not swallow that water and pill. I had to run to the sink and spit out the water and pill before too late. ahhhh I never thought I would come to appreciate a burp quite like I do just now. My protein bar just went through and I feel much better. I will give it another 20 minutes for so before I try taking my allergy pill again.

Yesterday I had to drive down to the university. I am still afraid (but hunger is beating out fear slowly but surely). I had a protein bar for breakfast (after I drank a bottle of water). I taught a fractions class and had a bunch of candy to use as manipulatives so I ate 4 of the leftover starbursts. For lunch I had 1/2 cup of hummus with a spoon (they served it with bread, veges and olives but I avoided). For dinner I attempted a small corn enchilada (did not work even though it was really soupy). Then in the evening I snacked on 4 pretzels, two small cookies and two left over taquitos from my daughters dinner. The pretzels and cookies went down fine (they were at my bunco game). The taquitos went down OK but I slimed a little before the went through.

I can tell that I will have to readjust my eating yet again before I get used to this fill. The constant readjustment is probably the best part of the thing. It has kept the dieting part of things fresh and new with every fill. and gradually pulled me into line. Just think of the old bandsters who never got any fills and what they had was what they got from day one. I think that a no fill band would have been much more difficult if not unsuccessfull for me.

Filler Up

Wowza-After a joyous weekend of looseness at my daughters graduation party I have now gone and gotten my first post-surgery fill.

This morning I went into the surgeons office and had the easiest fill ever!! Hit poked twice and was in, pulled out some fluid and added .4 cc's to give me around 7 cc's. I drank my requisite two Dixie cups full of water and it went down smoothly without a hitch. I had a bottle of water with me and by the time I got down to the parking lot and had a swig the water has slowed down a little. I now complete my drink with a burp (the water goes through a bit slower than I am used to now).

I am a tad scared that this is going to be one wallup of a fill but I am steeling myself for the fight. I loaded up on my foody ammunition. On the way home I got a nice big bottle of water that I will refill religiously for the next two weeks. I bought cans of soup for my few days (i hope) of liquids. Got ingredients for my son in law to make chili (he is a masterful chili maker) for when I feel ready for some mushies. I had a latte (to get some milky protein in for mid morning) and put in a protein added lemonade sachet in my water bottle (special K brand). For dinner I am going to have lentil soup if everything is ok. I have not had anything to eat today and I am just now starting to feel a tummy rumble at 1:30 pm.

Just after my masterfully implemented fill the surgeon and I got to talking about when I will need another and I told him that I seemed to need one every ten pounds of so. He compared the need for fills like your pants getting too big (now we can all relate to that one in an ever increasing manner i think). He said the band gets loose around our stomach just like our pants get to big around the waist as we lose weight. Soo if I were a drawing girl I would draw a stomach with a nice stylish pair of jeans sagging around my stomach :)...I am going to hang with this fill for a few weeks and see how it goes. Ill keep you posted with all of the gory or not so gory details :)

I feel all charged up with hope and fortitude again. I wish there was a way to get a mental fill when we don't need a real one!! If one of you readers comes up with an idea about how we can do that for each other I am in!!

One More Daughter With a Bachelors Degree Two to Go...

I just got back from my second to the oldest daughters University graduation. She look great in her cap and gown with chords because she completed a thesis and in international political economy. Now she needs to find work!!

The ceremony was long but good. All of the kids behaved beautifully (include my youngest) even though they had to sit for almost 3 hours while a bunch of adults droned on about boring stuff.

We waited and cheered on cue, took pictures and then walked to my daughters shared house for sandwiches, salad, fruit and vegetables. We visited, and had a good time talking to my daughters housemates family.

It was a nice time...and it makes me feel old but happy my daughter is moving another step towards adulthood and independence.

My oldest has passed through this hurdle and is back home working on a masters degree in mathematics, My number 3 daughter is a freshmen in pre-nursing...then i have a long wait until my youngest is ready to go to college. While waiting for the ceremony to start my friend prompted me to think about how old I will be when my youngest daughter will graduate college....I will be 60!!! and hopefully looking forward to retirement!

Life sure has its joys and today is one of them but with a little bittersweet thrown in too.

The Scale Started Moving Again!

This weekend was a bit of a mixed bag. On Friday My second to the youngest daughter had my youngest down to her university for a sleepover. After we dropped her off we drove to an Italian rest. for dinner and I was soo excited to try Gnocchi from the menu. Many rest. do it badly but I was hoping this one would be good. They brought out the obligatory pre-dinner bread and stupid me...I tried to eat the crust off the loaf. Munching away i commented that it really wasn't the right kind of bread for Italian food (more like plain white home-made). NO sooner had I said that...I got stuck! I sat. I waited. My salad came but I couldn't eat it. I went to the bathroom and tried to expel the offending bread. Nope..I burped finally and tried a bit of grated carrot from my salad..and then had to go to the bathroom again. Apparently the burp had not cleared the bread. Then my dinner came and I tried a bit of chicken..back to the bathroom. arghghghgh i finally gave up and talked to my husband while running back and forth to the bathroom to try and clear my problem so I could eat soem of my dinner! nope. The waitress came back a few times and asked if my food was ok-so embarrassing. Finally on the drive home and a ziplock bag (so awesome those things for emergencies)The offending piece of bread popped out and I had missed dinner :(.

On Saturday I caught up on all of my work, got my entire family to help clean the main living parts of the house and my husband went out and bought my mothers day present (a floor steamer). He brought it home, assembled it and amazingly mopped the floor!!!!!!!!! Yay hooray :). My number 3 daughter cooked taco salad for dinner and all was good with the world.

On Mother's day sunday My youngest daughter brought me a dry toaster waffle in bed (went down fine). I layed in and read a book until noon and then when we got up did some recleaning of the now remessed house. In the afternoon we went out and rented a post hole digger to get the ground ready to finish our fence and when done went out to dinner and California Pizza Company (they make a really nice Margarita Pizza with a super thin crust-and a stop for ice cream on the way home.

Then this morning during my daily morning weigh in I found that the surgery weight has finally come off and I have lost an additional pound! Yayyyyyy the hump is over and I am losing again. I am hoping to get a tiny fill next week during my post op appointment and I should be on my way to the 240's.

On the cat front she is still here and alive. The dumb cat (or cunning depending on how you look at it) stays away from the house now all day and only comes in after 5 when the vet clinic is closed. I don't know if she is going to last much longer on her own-so either she will appear during working hours this week or expire of natural causes on her own outside somewhere.

Healing, Stalled Weightloss but Cat Loss

So one week later my port site is feeling better and I have had great restriction. Just what I dreamed of-I can eat pretty much anything I try but it stays up above my stoma and keeps me full for hours. Yesterday I had 1/2 a piece of breakfast sausage patty and a couple of bites for toast. I tried to have a drink after one hour and still had food in my stomach. I waited for a couple of more big burps and went back to drinking. For lunch I had a protein bar (no time to get lunch). On my way home I had and frozen yogurt on the road while I drove home from work. For dinner I had some mac and cheese, chicken from my daughters home-made chicken soup (4 really solid pieces) and some cooked carrots (this was more than a cup so I figure I finally opened up).

It has been much the same during the week. a tiny breakfast and lunch and then soup for dinner. I expected to have at least lost back down to my all time low but I have been up and down between 3 pounds and 4 pounds above that number. I thought I would at least get a few more pounds off with this one.

I have a big dent where my surgery site is. I cant decide if it is swelling or if he attached my port to something that has given me a 2x2 inch dimple on the outside. Either way I am still swollen so Ill keep trying to be patient....

It is funny isn't it how everytime something doesn't go quite how you epect that the fear monster jumps on your back and you start worrying that this isn't going to work.

I don't think I have written about this before but we have two cats. They are pretty wild and they have never given much affection return on our food and my litterbox changing investment. We adopted the mother and her kitten from some grad students at the university where I work as they gave her food and water but no spaying and she was on her 4th litter in a year an a half. We adopted them when we moved to our current house. The mother cat is slightly friendlier than the kitten who is just plain wild. Shortly after we moved the mother picked up the kitten and moved her two houses down and under the house. We tried to get them back but the mother would have none of that. Hence the wild kitten. Well up until last week we had fallen into a pattern. The mother requests food and water for the kitten. She hunted for him and she came up to me of an evening for some affection every now and then.

This is about to come to a halt as the mother cat is going to have to be put to sleep any day now. She apparently has mouth cancer. At first I thought she had an infection but the Vets office (400 dollars later) says her blood tests are normal. She can hardly eat or drink. This morning I gave her some small pieces of cheese by hand and she had a hard time chewing them. I am not sure how the kitten is going to cope with this but we are soon to find out. As soon as I can coax the mother cat back into the cat carrier she is going back to the vet for the deed.

I didn't think my 7 year old daughter would mind much. At first she appeared fine but last night she began a campaign to bond with the poor dirty cat (can't clean herself). As the cat is now pretty weak she really doesn't run away or fight back like she used to and my daughter is getting more and more worked up about her being taken in to die.