GOOOOOAAAAAALLLLL!!!

Today is the day!  I have officially reached the goal weight that I set for myself when I decided to have RNY.  It took almost one year (359 days, to be exact), but that time has flown by and it seems like I was just being rolled into surgery a few weeks ago.  But, as we all know, this really is not the finish line for me.  It's more like the beginning of a finish line that goes on for the rest of my days.  I have heard of many, many people who regain their weight after WLS and I am, of course, going to do my best not to be one of those people.  I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...

So I am posting a pic I took this morning, just to mark the occasion of reaching my goal, but this is not my official "after" picture.  I am employing the services of my daughter, the professional photographer, to have a real photo shoot and do the thing right.  I have shied away from pictures for the last 20 years and I decided, when I reached goal, that I would have a real photo taken to mark the occasion.  I am going to dress up and actually put on make-up (gasp!!) and enjoy myself.  I always think that having pictures of oneself kind of makes one seem a bit vain, but I am willing to be considered vain this once.  So here is the reached-goal-weight-but-still-using-powder-room-for-photos-because-we-don't-own-a-full-length-mirror shot.  Oh, and dontcha like the new t-shirt John made me for my birthday?  (and yes, there is a 99% chance that you will see my car in some of my official goal photos) :)

Thanks so much again to all of you who have read this blog and sent me encouraging notes along the way.  It meant more to me than you probably know.  I feel so blessed to know so many truly decent, kind people, and to be able to call them friends, well, it's just an embarrassment of riches. :)

~k

food = mixed feelings

Hooray for not-summer!!  I am so thankful that fall is here and ready for even cooler temperatures.  It's so nice to be able to drive around town with the windows down again, enjoying the crisp breeze.  And the best part, of course, is that it is football season.  However, I am pretty glum about football and having a hard time getting into the NFL now that Sweet Baby Peyton is gone for the season.  I know most people wouldn't understand this, but I pretty much feel like crying every Sunday afternoon now.  It's pathetic, but there it is.  At least I still have my OSU Cowboys and Union Redskins, so that helps a little.  But still...I just don't think they should have allowed the NFL season to continue once they knew Peyton wouldn't be able to play.  I mean, it's just not football!!!

So the weight loss continues, little by little.  I am now down another 3 pounds, for a total of 115.  I think the most fun part has been the clothes shopping.  I can now go into any store and not feel embarrassed that they don't go up to my size.  I no longer have to limit myself to plus-size stores.  It's a wonderful thing.  A friend and I went down to the new OKC outlet mall last weekend and I had an absolute blast, trying on clothes I would never have dreamed of even looking at last year.  I got a great bargain on an expensive sweater dress I had been wanting, plus a new coat and jacket.  I have also fallen in love with Victoria's Secret jeans, just wishing I had ordered a size down because the ones I bought 2-3 weeks ago are now a little too big and I'll have to go down another size.  This is a good thing, and I'm not complaining, but they are expensive jeans and I wish I had been more optimistic and ordered another size down the first time.  It's all good, but every time I think I am probably arriving at my final weight and can buy new clothes, they end up being too big within a few weeks and I have to start over again.

So I think the weirdest thing of all is that I am wishing I was still a foodie.  It sounds ridiculous, because being a foodie is exactly how I ended up weighing nearly 300 pounds!  But I used to love food, and I mean I really LOVED food.  It was an enjoyable event, to go out and have dinner with the family.  Now food is just a necessary thing that I don't enjoy and don't really want, but I eat because I know I must.  There's no pleasure in it anymore, and even though I know it is completely irrational, I miss that true love of food and enjoying decadent desserts as well as rich and hearty main courses.  I would never go back to the way I was, but I do miss the love of food.  I guess now I am substituting the love of food with the love of clothes shopping.  :)

~k

It's finally NOT 100+ degrees!

It's almost starting to feel like my most favorite time of the year.  Yay autumn!!!  All that crap earlier in my blog about enjoying the summer?  Yeah, well, that's over.  Once we had 4+ weeks of 105+ degrees here on the sun, I was completely over it and started hating summer and heat once again.  It's good to be back to normal :)

I am discovering more and more that the human body (or at least mine) is a strange thing.  I mean, how can a person lose 5 pounds on the scale and not feel any difference in the way their clothing fits, then lose 1 pound and go down 2 dress sizes?  That has happened to me several times since surgery.  Take last week, for example.  I only lost 1 pound at my weekly weigh-in, but when I went to get dressed for Mass last Saturday night, I literally had nothing to wear.  I had several church-appropriate tops in the closet that were a bit too snug the last time I had tried them on (seemingly just a couple of weeks ago), and when I put them on that night, each one looked like a freaking tent on me.  I mean they were ridiculous to the point that I could not wear them without looking like I was wearing a moo-moo.  So I eventually settled on the least ridiculous looking one and still felt like I was wearing a maternity shirt all night.  Then today I weigh in and discover that I've lost 5 pounds since last Monday, but my clothes only got a little bit looser.  It's all good, it's just weird how pound loss and mass loss don't always mean the same thing.  In any event, my total is now 111.5 pounds and I'm only about 10 pounds away from my original goal.  And that's another thing.  Being tall makes a HUGE difference when it comes to how much weight you can hide.  No one believed I was almost 300 pounds last year, and everyone now says that I shouldn't lose any more weight or I'll be too thin.  But according to the chart at the doctor's office, my "goal" weight should be 150 pounds, which means I need to lose 25 more.  I am okay with where I am right now and if I never lost another pound, I'd feel great.  It's just funny to me that when people say I am going to look too thin if I keep losing, and I tell them what the AMA thinks my goal weight should be, they look at me like I'm going to wither away and die if I even try to reach that. I'm not trying, but if it happens, it happens, and I'll be fine. I will never worry about being too thin because there will always be plenty of extra inches on me, and gravity isn't doing me any favors, either.  (I guess if anyone tells me I'm looking too thin, I'll threaten to disrobe and clear up the matter tout de suite)

~k

selective vision

Okay, so yesterday I saw Dr. G, who told me that I have reached my goal weight and need to stop losing now.  I was like...Yeah, so, how am I supposed to do that?  I already eat all I can possibly hold every day.  He tells me I can now cheat a little.  Since I'm already doing that, I am having a hard time seeing it making a difference.  But the weight loss has slowed down to nearly a crawl, so I'm not going to worry about it overmuch.  I can still stand to lose 20 more pounds without even looking thin (I'll still be able to pinch several inches) so it's all good.  But the most interesting part of my visit yesterday was that I noticed, while the nurse was thumbing through my chart, that there was a picture of me in there that I had forgotten all about.  It was my official "before" picture that they take of every WLS patient and keep in the file.  I asked if I could see it and I still cannot believe that was me.  I took a picture of it with my cell phone because it is the only full-length picture of me at whale size that exists, to my knowledge.  Isn't it amazing that you can look in a mirror every day and not really see yourself?  Of course I knew I was a whale; I'm not blind, after all, and I do have to shop for clothing and I can read the numbers on the tags.  But still.  I guess I didn't really realize how I looked, and I especially didn't realize how my face had changed.  I think that's the truly mind-blowing part. I look at my face every single day and I don't think it looks any different.  Then I look at this "before" picture and I hardly recognize that face from the one I see now.  Amazing how over the course of 10 months my face has changed so much, yet I wouldn't have really seen it without this picture.  Naturally, there are lots of other things about myself that I don't see or that I see in a much different way than others see, but that's a blog entry for some other time when I have nothing else to do for a couple of months.  Changing my body was a piece of cake compared to changing my brain.

~k

What does 100 pounds look like? (okay, technically 103...)

I haven't posted in a while because: (a) There's been a lot of stuff going on around here, and (b) I wanted to wait until I hit the century mark before posting again.  Because I'm writing now, you can probably already guess my weight loss so far...I did hit 100 pounds and am now at 103 total.  I just needed to lose 1 more at my weigh-in this morning to make it to 100, but instead I lost 4 more.  It's weird how the body holds on to weight and then lets it go all of a sudden (with no change in diet or exercise or whatever).  In any event, I am thrilled to report that at exactly 9 months out, I am now down 103 pounds.  I feel great physically.  I still have mental hang-ups from time to time.  The week before last, which shall be referred to as b.s.a. (before Spencer's accident) I felt really fat and it didn't matter how many times I looked in the mirror or thought about the size I am wearing now.  I just felt like I had this huge muffin top no matter what pair of shorts or pants I wore and I couldn't talk my mind into believing what the mirror was telling me.  Isn't that bizarre?  I mean, I am still overweight and I do still have love handles, of course, but I just couldn't see the glass as half full that week.  Fortunately that doesn't happen all that often and I am usually able to see myself as I really am now instead of what my mind was used to seeing for the last several years.

So Spencer was discharged from the hospital last Tuesday and we are still in the middle of dressing changes, healing and scabbing, etc.  He goes this week for his followup visit with the trauma surgeon and hopefully we will hear that he is healing at the appropriate rate.  I am just praying that he will be healed enough to be able to move down to Stillwater and start classes in a couple of weeks without any delays or problems.  But again, he is fortunate to be alive and when I get stressed about hospital bills, school, insurance claims, etc., I try to just focus on his being alive, having no broken bones and not a scratch to his head, and somehow I feel a little better about the whole thing.  Of course, I'm not the one going through the shower scrubbings and dressing changes...

New job now with great hours (WOOT!!) so gotta get the day started.  Thanks and much love to all of you who actually read this rather pathetic little blog and send me encouraging notes.  You are much, much more appreciated than you can probably understand.  :)

What does 100 pounds look like?  Here are some of the pics I've taken along the weigh :)

~k

almost 8 months out now...

Well, Spencer is officially enrolled at OSU now, and I'm thrilled for him.  We went down there Monday for freshman orientation/enrollment and it was great to see that wonderful place again.  It has changed to the point that it's hardly recognizable from when I was there.  It seems to me that the campus has doubled in size, and the residence halls are nothing like I remember.  Spencer (and 3 roomies) will be living in a four-bedroom suite thing with 2 baths and living area, etc., all furnished.  It's like an apartment and nothing like the old dorms used to be.  Just amazing.  And so begins his life as an aeronautical and mechanical engineer.  I am so proud.  

I attended my second Cubs game last weekend in KC and it was great.  I have been to 2 games now and the Cubs won both, so I'm 2 for 2.  Then we went to the Kansas Speedway and rode for a few laps in a NASCAR car.  It was awesome, although my Dad, during his turn, asked the driver "is this as fast as this thing will go?"  He also seemed disappointed that he didn't end up in the wall or something.  Men.

So I've lost another 4 pounds, bringing my total to 94.  Still feeling great and enjoying the changes.  Spencer told me I was nearly unrecognizable on the back of John's bike a few days ago, which I take as a good thing.  The bike certainly has a lot more room for me now and is much more comfortable to ride!! 

~k

the weird in-between phase...

Well, I have officially hit that point where I'm between plus sizes and regular sizes and...it's weird.  I went to the mall last week (gasp!) to pick up a birthday gift for Kelsey (who is 20 today...choke...gasp...cough) and I decided to roll the dice and try on some jeans in the misses department.  I wasn't sure exactly what to expect, but I was ready for disappointment and just decided to go ahead and give it a shot.  Lo and behold, I didn't even need the largest misses size, which shocked me no small amount (however, I must point out here that Spandex being in jeans fabric has probably played a  large role).  In my happiness, I bought jeans I don't really need, but hey, they are like 5 dress sizes smaller than before WLS and so I had to redefine "need".  Then today I went to Dress Barn and tried on some dresses (regular misses sizes) and though I didn't buy anything, I did discover that I don't really need to go to the store way out in Jenks anymore (the only one that carries plus sizes) and so that was another small victory.  Some of the stuff was a little tight, but it will probably fit comfortably within a month or two.

And speaking of that...weight loss total hit 90 pounds today, just 10 more to go until the century mark.  I still couldn't be happier with the entire process and I feel very fortunate that I am doing so well.  Even my 6-month labs came back with a great report, which thrilled me.  I am not anemic, which tends to be a big problem with gastric bypass patients, so that's good.  My labs are all on the low side, but none of them are abnormal or anything to raise a red flag, so I'm happy about that.  One strange side effect I am noticing is that I think I am finally turning into my father.  Those of you who know him understand that he is part lizard and believes 100 degrees with 80% humidity is perfect weather and should be the goal of every day of the year.  I won't go that far, but I am beginning to love the sunshine and I enjoy sitting outside, just soaking it up.  Of course, one must bear in mind that John likes our house thermostat to be at 67 year round, so that probably has something to do with it.  But I do have trouble staying warm more and more now, and when I'm inside, I'm usually in long pants, a t-shirt, sweatshirt or jacket, and super-thick, furry socks.  Or I just have a cat on me.  Both work great, but I do worry about what will happen when winter hits again.  I may have to start wearing a parka, or maybe 2 or 3 cats at a time.

~k