Fat Woman With A Band

It’s been one year since I was banded.

I’m pleased with my weight loss and my health improvements.

I’m pleased with being able to by clothes in “regular” stores.

I’m pleased with my increased level of activity.

I’m confident I can continue and meet my goal.

Yeah me!

First, apologies for forgetting to publish last week. I did write the blog and then forgot to push the “publish” button. Oops.

So, it’s another week with no movement at all on that darn rascally scale. I know that I’ve been lifting weights at the Y and that means I’m building muscle and muscle weighs more … blah, blah, blah. But even knowing that, I still want the the scale to move.

I think going back to the beginning will help me. That is, keeping a food diary, being more vigilant with quantity and quality. Making sure I’m getting the right protein-carb-fat-etc. ratio.

The problem is doing that work. So, my strategy is to make an appointment with a nutritionist at the clinic. I’m pretty sure they’ll ask me for a food diary before I see them. And as much as I don’t want to do that – I really, really, really don’t want to – that’ll get me thinking about my nutrition intake in a better way.

So, tomorrow I’m calling the nutritionist – there it’s in writing … I’m doing it.

Oh, and about the Y. I’m liking it. I was sure I’d be o.k. with it, but I’m actually liking it. I hope I can keep it up as it is a bit of a bother. I’m keeping my eyes on my goal … gotta go, gotta go, gotta go go go!

I definitely have a love/hate relationship with that darn scale. I haven’t lost any weight in way too long.

On the other hand I admit that I had to buy smaller pants, and I do feel pretty darn good. Jackie says not to focus on the weight loss, but rather on the inches lost. And I suppose that’s especially important currently as I’m doing more exercises moving weight around, and not just my own.

It’s just effin’ frustrating.

I had a great time in NYC. Walked and walked and walked. Ate. Saw a couple of plays. Just enjoyed being there. I didn’t worry about the food. By that I mean I didn’t worry about whether I was eating too much or not enough of the right stuff. I just ate what I wanted, and I didn’t feel I made too many bad choices. I definitely didn’t eat in the same volume as I would have in the past.

I’m coming up to my one-year anniversary of getting the band installed. I had hoped to lose 100 pounds in the first year and I’ve done that. So there. Be happy with that I say to myself. But, darn it all … I want more!

Patience.

I’ve been pondering what to do next, that is what to do when I’ve reached my goal weight with this exercise regimen. I need to think about what kind of exercise I’ll do to help keep my weight in check, and not be “soul-sucking” using Jackie’s words.

I’ve been pondering doing a half-marathon walk. I know I can do the walk, but whether I can do it in a quasi-competitive way is another thing. Also, I wonder how you train for that, and then which marathon would I do? I think I’ll percolate on this for a bit. One of my first thoughts about this is that I’d need to train by walking – no duh! – but winter is just about to begin for us and I seriously dislilke winter weather and walking on the icy, snowy, slushy, yucky streets. Treadmill? That kinda invokes the soul-sucking analogy for me.

Anyway, as I say, I’ll percolate on this for a bit.

The weight loss is trickling along, just about what’s to be expected. I have about 29 pounds to go ’til goal. I really hope that it won’t take 29 weeks to do that, but it’s feeling like it might. Now THAT feels soul-sucking.

Carrying on.

When I think about comfort food I often think first of food my mother cooked on Sunday mornings for Sunday lunch. My parents were Hungarian so the food we had at home was Hungarian.

So when I visit my relatives in Budapest I look forward to a lot of home cooking. And they never disappoint. My aunt, a cousin, and a cousin’s daughter-in-law are all great cooks. I don’t crave fancy meals, just everyday cooking. My cousin likes to prepare more elaborate meals, but there’s always an “everyday” course even there.

I’m quite satisfied that I had pretty much all the food that I wanted with two small exceptions. I had fried chicken, chicken soup, dumplings, and fish meals. All y-u-m-m-y. I had a couple pieces of pastry, and some Hungarian crepes.  I didn’t get to langos, which is a fried bread dough that can be enjoyed savory or sweet. And I didn’t have any strudel.

My relatives were very helpful in that they asked me what I could eat – to which I answered EVERYTHING. I was also very conscious that I was being observed for signs of, well I don’t know why exactly but I think they weren’t sure in the first few days that I wouldn’t start gagging at every meal. When they realized the lapband wasn’t a thing to worry about, they all relaxed.

I didn’t do as much exercise as I wanted to, but I did the best I could. I had two good walking days, and one so-so walking day. Jackie gave me an exercise routine to do in my hotel room which I did every second day. And my room was on the seventh floor so I took the stairs up and down at least once a day, and sometimes twice.

I had only one day that was uncharacteristically hungry and that was the day coming home. I ate every single bit of airline food available, and happily it was relatively plentiful. Breakfast, lunch, one small salty snack, and one heated veggie snack.

If I have one complaint it’s this – I had a lot of problems staying regular, and I’m still in that place. I don’t know what exactly is going wrong, and I’m going to concentrate on fibre, veggies and fruit this week to see if I can get back to normal.

So, in the end I lost weight. Not a lot, but enough to have reached my second last milestone – I am now overweight. My BMI says I am no longer obese.

I have 30 pounds to go to goal. It still feels a long, long way away.

That might be a slight misnomer. I think of vacation as getting away from work, and as I actually don’t work much (o.k., hardly at all), I don’t think I should call it a vacation.

Anyway, I’m leaving my home, and going on an airplane to another country to visit my relatives for ten days.

I’m an inveterate over-packer. I believe that started because clothes in my size were hard to find, and I wanted to make sure that I had enough with me. Kinda of crazy thinking. I think that kind of thinking also explains why I have so many pairs of socks – more than 200. Here’s my sock-thinking: socks are pretty much one size and I could get them anywhere, anytime. I kinda also like the feel of brand new socks – my nod to fetishism.

My clothes arsenal is also much diminished. I still have a few items that are about three sizes too big for me as I haven’t been able to give them up yet. On the whole, though, I have fewer items to choose from because I’m down-sizing. I’ll probably be taking about half my wardrobe with me. But now if something happens, e.g, my suitcase gets lost, or accidentally spill paint over my entire wardrobe I’ll be able to get replacement garb easily enough.

I’m down another two pounds or so this week, and closing in on my next goal which is to be overweight, not obese, according to the BMI scales.

honderd, cent, hundert, cento, cern, ciento.

one hundred pounds.

No weight change in two weeks.

Very, very, very frustrating.

I’m this close to losing 100 pounds and the darned scale won’t co-operate.

What to do? What to do?

The old me would have sat down for a few bad noshes. The new me? I’ve kept exercising, and kept watching what I eat.

Something has got to give. Got to.

Jackie suggested more fruit and fibre. She’s right. I’m going grocery shopping now.

And I know before you say it … not the kind of fruit or fibre as in Finnish Christmas Star pastries. But they do look yummy, don’t they?

Grrr.

Often when we’re learning something new we think of the process as following a steadily climbing curve, which at some point begins to decrease – the bell curve. As time increases our learning may get more difficult to begin with and then begin to drop off as we’ve “learned it all.”

In the past week I’ve been thinking of my progress curve as it relates to fitness. I don’t feel my progress has followed a standard bell shaped learning curve. Rather it feels like improving my fitness level can best be shown as a series of steps. It feels like I just arrived on the top of one of these steps or the tread after a very, very long riser.

Though my workouts haven’t been easy, I feel like I’m recovering faster between sets of exercises, and I’m able to get to the next exercise a bit faster. It’s not consistent, but I feel I’m making progress.

Also on my regular walking route around my place I used to do it in about 1 1/2 hours, with the last 30 minutes a bit of a struggle. I walked this route the last couple of days – I powered my way through it in about 1 hour and 10 minutes. I was able to sustain a faster pace, and I wasn’t dragging my butt at the end.

And I lost another two pounds. A grand week, all in all.

Did I tell you my project plan? No? Really?

I’m not surprised. I didn’t really have one articulated in my head. Other than losing weight I haven’t told many people how much I want to lose. And though I’m not quite ready to tell everyone how much I weigh right now, I can share this.

I want to lose 134 lbs. That’ll get me to a “normal” BMI for my height. To get to this goal I have three more milestones.

1. The next milestone to reach is to have lost 100 lbs. I’m 4.6 lbs away.
2. The milestone after that is to reach a BMI that says I’m overweight, not obese. I’m less than 2 points away from that.
3. The final milestone is really the goal – a loss of 134 lbs from my weight in November 2008.

I’m projecting reaching my goal sometime in March 2010. Thinking about my weight loss as a project plan, i.e., using the milestone terminology, helps me keep my eye on the prize.