Four Years, Twelve Years, and Tomorrow.

Four Years:  It has been four full years (well and 1 month but who is counting) since I had my lapband installed.  One year and 6 months ago I hit goal weight. This year has seen a renewal in my battle as after I quit my job and attended BOOBS 2011 my weight began to creep up.  I am now sitting at 15 pounds over goal and 20 pounds over my lowest weight ever as an adult.  So what sage advice to I have this far out?

• It is always work.  Sure there are days when it feels easy and there are days when you feel like you are on top of the world but the weight loss battle is never easy with or without the lapband.  For me the lapband made it possible but not easy.  
• We are very complicated creatures and losing weight is equally complicated.  When I changed something I had to give it a good two weeks sometimes before I saw any results.  I also found (and completely let slip out of my sight during the last six months) that changing just one thing at a time for a period of time yielded results.  1.  It was doable, 2.  it made a difference and often created changes in other areas as a consequence not work and 3.  gave me someTHING to focus on instead of creating a distraction of things (like when I decided that limiting a bucket load of everything was the way to go) waiting to trip me up.
• We are very good and figuring out how to eat around a band.  After four years it is really easy to slip into habits that sabotage myself.  I honestly do not think this is a conscious thing but one deeply embedded in our brains.  The brain that still thinks we are fat.  The brain that is still a little broken because that band is a physical barrier around our stomach not something that fixed whatever chemically or physically was out of sync in the first place to make us obese.

I am definitely in a phase of rethinking how and what this band will hold for the next few years.  It is working fine.  I have, however, developed some unsavory habits that need to change.  I slip things past it.  I drink things past it.  I sit with food and feed it in over a period of time to get it down.  I use sauces or what some bandsters fondly call 'food lube'.  All of these things are only hurting myself.  I have attempted some pretty stupid (stupid because I should know better by now) dramatic interventions to re-lose the weight but..I should have known myself better by now.  I am now ruminating on the ONE thing I am going to change for the next two weeks to try and get a handle on this problem.  At this point in the thinking it is going to be daily exercise as that is the glaring change that happened when I opened the shop a few months ago and quit my job several months before that.  So...one thing for the next two weeks.  

Twelve years:

David and I failed..well sort of..to celebrate our anniversary this year.  We have been full on since Winter with moving, jobs, and Grace shifting to home-school.  a few weeks ago we finally went to the beach with Grace as we didn't plan or take really any vacation this summer.  While walking along the beach it suddenly occurred to us that it was our anniversary.  We both..forgot.  It was OK and at least we were having a bit of a day off at the time.  Is this a sign of aging?  things going stale?  or exhaustion? :)

 Shortly Before Surgery August 2008

 Down 75 pounds August 2009

2010 was a very active year and I was down 

134 pounds in this photo.  This is less than I weigh in at now.

Down 146 pounds- Below Goal 2011

Down 126 pounds (15 pound above goal weight)

Tomorrow:  Day off :)  Grace needs a new passport.  I am visiting the doctor for a check-up of sorts and to moan about all of my aches and pains.  Tomorrow..A walk for 4 miles (as we have a great loop in our neighborhood and David is on board too).

Wish me lots of rain (people knit when the weather is crap :))..Happy september to you all!!

xxxooo