The Power of Positivity

My One Month + 1 Week Follow Up Appt

Yesterday I had my one month (plus one week because I had to reschedule from last week) post op appointment. I did not see my surgeon. I saw one of the other surgeons this time around. I am very grateful for that. My surgeon is always negative when I see her. Maybe she is just being tough, but she comes across as being negative. I was worried to see her because of how she talked to me at my 1 week follow up. I know, I am super sensitive to stuff like that.

I saw a nurse first and weighed in. I officially was 51.5 lbs down! Nurse was super positive and showed me my weight history on the computer screen so I could really see how great I was doing. Back on 9/6/2018 (when I went there to get my lap band removed) I weighed 360.4. So, in just a bit over 2 years I gained 45 lbs and then lost 51.5. I just lost 2 years of weight gain plus and additional 6.5 lbs! THAT is awesome! In comes the doctor and we chat. He says my incisions are almost all healed. One of them is taking longer to heal because a stitch was sticking out. It finally fell off and now the incision is healing quickly. He asked me if I was happy. I told him I was feeling great and happy about my weight loss. He said “you are on track plus some” and said he was extremely happy with my progress. Told me that it is entirely possible I could lose more than 150 lbs in the first year. I have 11 months left in my first 12 months. To lose at least 100 lbs more I only need to lose about 9 lbs a month for the last 11 months. Wow, I know I can do that!

Here is my weight loss and exercise charts. With the exercise I am deciding to not let week 2 get to me. I had issues. It’s ok to have a bad spell. In the first two days of this week I am already over half of what I got last week and I haven’t even walked yet today. I am shooting for 16,000 steps this week. I have every reason to believe I will get there.

After my doctors appointment, I went to my last phase diet class. It’s basically the same volume wise, but they added a good bit of food that we can eat now. I can have fresh fruits and veggies now. We can still not eat bread, grapes, watermelon, and any meat that is tough. No sausage or bacon because of the high fat content. (Hence why I tried veggie sausage today!) To the left is my five meals for today. We are supposed to eat protein with each meal and then veggies with 3 of those and the other 2 are to be either fruits or starch as the side. We are supposed to get 80 oz of fluid as well as 80-90g of protein. They reduced the requirement of protein drinks down to 20-30 g of protein. When I finish this glass of water I have and drink my protein drink I will have 83 oz of fluid (water, milk, protein drink) and 113 g of protein. Pretty good for my first day on my forever diet!

One thing that I am very excited about is how my new way of eating is going to help the kids. I am not making them eat everything I do, but I buy way less unhealthy food because I don’t want to see it. If I can’t eat it, I don’t want it! HAHA No worries, they still get their favorite Kraft mac & cheese! I have switched to low fat mayo, no sugar added ketchup, reduced fat crackers, and many more. These are permanent changes for the whole household. We are all going to get healthy. Exercise is the next thing I am going to get the kids involved with.

Walking on Clouds

I left that appointment very motivated. I knew I was doing good that whole month, but not knowing if it was good in the eyes of the Dr kept me a little on edge and worried. Now that I know I conquered the first month and my surgeons are happy with my progress, that feeling of worry has left me. I got off to a great start. As I sat in my diet class and listened to the other people complain about their lack of weight loss or the crappy way they felt, I got annoyed because in the same breath they all pretty much said they were doing quite a bit of cheating. Eating things they shouldn’t and not following the program. I am not saint, I cheated 2 or 3 times in small amounts, but I learned my lesson quickly and have been doing great for a couple weeks. I worked very hard prior to surgery to get myself into a mental state that I could handle this. I put a huge focus on my emotional eating because I knew if I didn’t then I would NOT be successful. I think these programs need to put a much bigger focus on making sure that people are getting that under control before they have surgery. Any bariatric surgery can be cheated and eaten around.

I know things are going to keep getting better and better. I got this and I survived the hardest month of this whole process. I am eating well, happy with what I am eating, and the weight is still coming off.

The sky is the limit!