Wonder of Wonder

I was surprised over the last couple of days to see that my weight dropped 5 pounds. I honestly don't understand my body and how the whole plateau/weight drop thing works. My eating hasn't been great the last few days, I've eaten more sweets than I should, yet the scale went down. Maybe it has to do with water retention and monthly cycles or something. Whatever the case, I'm happy about it. I'm now officially 1/3 of the way to my goal weight. Amazing. Man, if the weight continued to come off as fast as it began then I'll be at goal in 9 months! LOL Wouldn't that be amazing? I'm not holding my breath, though.

I have that fill tomorrow morning. I'm nervous because of all the needle sticks last time, but hopefully Dr. Mel will have better luck getting the fluid in. I'm hoping to have some better restriction after this adjustment.

I've talked a bit about my hunger being gone. Well, it's definitely back. That same lack of satiety right along with it. I can be full from a meal, but still feel unsatisfied. I hope to get back that lack of hunger with this next fill. That is the way I've been successful taking the weight off thus far. (And the liquid diet didn't hurt the weight loss any.)

Waiting for my adjustment

Well, things have slowed down a lot. I actually show a one-pound gain for this week. I've been stuck at the same weight for the last ten days or so. Thankfully, next week I'm getting my second band adjustment. I have started being very hungry again, so I'm hoping the adjustment will help with that. I hope the adjustment goes better than the last one.

Progress Pictures for April

I'm amazed when I look at these pictures. I've always said that I have a mirror, I know what I look like. Well, not exactly. I was surprised how much different I look in this set of pictures. I'm down 43 pounds. I'm working on getting the pictures spliced side by side with the before pictures so the comparison will be easier to see. I'll post those at that time. Thanks for looking!

I'm obese!

Which is awesome, since a few days ago I was morbidly obese. Okay, I know it's silly, and just labels, but I have officially dropped into the range for being obese, no longer with that nasty m-word attached. I started at a BMI of 46.1 and as of yesterday, I'm now 39.8. I may not even qualify for the surgery if I applied for it right now. Although I still have considerable weight to lose, that's the basic criteria. I've added a ticker at the top right of my blog so you can see my progress. I had to swallow some pride to put those numbers up there.

Joey asked how I'm feeling, if I'm feeling energetic. I'm feeling slightly more energetic. Since my surgery, my daycare load has more than doubled, so I'm also more busy and darn tired by the end of the day. I have the energy to do what I need to for daycare, so I guess that's where the energy is being spent.

Emotionally, I'm doing great. I feel happy and blessed pretty much all the time these days. It's just exhilarating to step on that scale and see it either staying put or going down. I wasn't a weigher before. Who wants to watch their weight go up and up? I sure didn't. I didn't really know what to do about it. Now I do.

My girls are thrilled that my body is changing. Hannah hugged me the other day and was so excited that her fingers could touch behind me. We tried again later and she can actually clasp her hands behind my back while hugging me. She was trying to express what she was feeling about my changing body. She prefaced it by wondering if it was too rude to say, but then the best way she could get it out was, "Mommy, you didn't look very good when you were fatter." I told her I know and also helped her understand that she could rephrase that into a compliment, instead of being negative.

Our branch held Fast Sunday yesterday and both girls (all on their own) decided to fast. When we discussed what they'd be fasting for, they both said they were fasting to help me continue to lose weight. When I asked Brad, that was on his list as well. Well, that I could continue to have success with my surgery and weight loss. I'm so loved and supported by these wonderful people I get to call my family. How can I not be happy? :) Thanks for all of your love and support as well. I'm truly blessed.

A big milestone

As of this morning, I've lost 40 pounds. 40 POUNDS! It seems ever so much more than 38. I've been trying to go clothes shopping without much luck. I've tried clothes on twice at Wal-mart and ended up just buying a couple new bras. (Sorry if that's TMI.) None of the clothes look very good on me and so I'll just make do with some of the smaller sizes that I have at home. I've retired two pairs of pants that look ridiculous on me. I think I'll be retiring a couple more this week. If I had more options than just Wal-mart, it might be a different story, but for now, we'll just make do. On April 5th or 8th I'll take new progress pictures in the same outfit as the before shots. For now, though, I'll just add a recent picture of me.

Weekly Weight Loss Journal

I sat down and looked at what my weekly weight loss totals have been. I thought you might find them interesting. I will keep updating them.
Week 1 lost 16 lbs
Week 2 lost 8 lbs
Week 3 gained 1 lb
Week 4 lost lost 4 lbs
Week 5 lost 5 lbs
Week 6 lost 2 lbs
Week 7 lost 1 lb
Week 8 lost 6 lbs

I'll never know quite how I managed to lose 16 pounds in a week, or even 8 for that matter. Anyway, this all totals up to 34 pounds lost at this point. (At least that's what the scale says, though adding the numbers up gives me 35, so I'm confused and too tired to figure out where that extra pound comes from.)

My surgeon's goal for me is to be losing 1-2 pounds a week, and as long as I continue doing that, I may not need another fill for a while. Although, the first three months of fills are included in the cost of surgery, so it's cheaper to get them sooner rather than later. What to do, what to do?

Empowerment

I just went grocery shopping. I felt so empowered to be buying good, real, healthy food. After being on the pre and post operative diet, it is an amazing change to be able to eat vegetables again. I filled my cart with more than twice as much produce as I usually do. I got squash, (zucchini, yellow, spaghetti and butternut), green, red and yellow onions, bananas, clementines, apples, mushrooms, and a few other things I'm forgetting. I can't wait to make up some veggie omlettes, have some veggies with the fish I bought. (Talapia, for the first time ever, some pouches of flavored tuna and canned salmon.) I'm still doing okay with not eating sweets. I passed the Easter candy with hardly a thought. That, to me, is a miracle. Empowered is the word that kept coming to me as I shopped. Healthiest shopping trip I've made in years, hands down.