Here I go....

Well I am less than 12 hours away from my surgery! I went to the Dr yesterday for the dreaded weigh in and let me tell you it was quit anticlimactic. First of all as soon as I got in the nurse headed for the scale as usual and she asked how things were going. I told her that I knew where I was as far as weight loss so I wouldn’t be surprised by the number. She looked at the scale and said “10 pounds good job.” That was it nothing about how I didn’t make the 15 pound goal that was asked of me just “good job.” After she took my vitals she said the Dr would be in soon and asked if everything else was going ok. I told her that I was worried about not meeting my 15 pound goal and she said “oh don’t worry about that you still have a couple of days before surgery.” In my head I am thinking there is no way that I will be able to lose 5 pounds in 2 days. And then she continued saying “you still lost 10 so that is good.” The Dr came in and took one look at my chart and said “looks like you lost 10 pounds good job.” It appears that everything went good with the diet.” Again, nothing in regards to the fact that I didn’t make the number that was expected. I was too busy thinking to myself about why they were not making a bigger deal about this then I thought that they would I didn’t get a chance to even ask why they gave me that number in the first place.
After my 10 minute appointment I was sent upstairs to get pre-registered. I have not gone through this process before so I had no idea what I was even going there to do. Basically they do all the prep work that usually happens in the hospital before surgery. They took all my vitals, went over my medical history, went over the million things that they have to cover, and then I was done. The whole process took about a little over an hour. Doing this beforehand allows me to walk in tomorrow and get my little wrist band and head straight to pre-op which is pretty nice not to have to wait around for a few hours before surgery. So the plan for tomorrow is I have to be the hospital at 6am…ugh surgery time is at 730am(first surgery of the day YAY) I do get to shower beforehand but I can’t wear any lotion, deodorant, hair products, or makeup. I am going to be one hot tired mess in the morning. Luckily the plan is to just sleep the rest of the day so I am not too worried. I probably won’t be functioning too much until Sat so I will post about my experience as soon as I can. Wish me luck!

4 Days until weigh in

Well I have 4 more days until my weigh in and I am getting a little nervous. I am down 9 pounds which I am super excited about but I still am supposed to lose 6 more in the next 4 days which I really don’t think is possible. I am just going to keep working hard these next few days so I can get as close as I can to the target weight. I had one weak moment this week where I ate a whole wheat Eggo waffle for dinner. I was really craving carbs that day and it was either eat the Eggo or down the whole bag of leftover Easter candy that my daughter has so I picked the lesser of the two evils. I was happy to see that the one Eggo didn’t really have any impact because I still lost another pound since that day. I am hardly feeling that hungry anymore which is nice. I am still pretty moody though. I cry at anything and I can be totally happy one minute and then yelling the next. I am sure that my family and friends don’t appreciate this but I hope that they understand. My workouts have become a lot easier this last week. I found myself actually wanting to go to the gym every day. It may have helped that I had a workout friend this week on some of the days. It is always good to have someone to work out with you to help the time go by faster. I did have one major accomplishment for myself this week; I did 45 min on the elliptical and got to 3 miles. I know that 45 min doesn’t seem like a lot but for me this was huge because before I could barely make it to 15 min without wanting to die. The most surprising thing was when I hit the 45 min mark I felt like I could go even longer and if it hadn’t been for having to go get my daughter I think I would have stayed on to see how long I really could go. I also didn’t want to push myself too much because I still wanted to be able to walk the next day!
I have so much to do this weekend that will help me get through this last long stretch. I never realized how much my weekends used to revolve around food. I don’t know why the vegetables are so easy to eat during the week but when the time the weekend gets here I don’t even want to taste a vegetable. Keeping busy is going to be the key. I will keep you updated as it gets closer to Tuesday.

Two weeks down

So week number two is almost complete and I have to say it wasn’t as hard as week one was however, I am just at the weekend mark where I had the most trouble last week but I am hopeful. I don’t know if I just kept myself busier this past week or if my body is somewhat adjusting to the lack of food I am eating but I didn’t have the cravings like I did last week. I did feel a little hunger throughout the week but overall it wasn’t that bad. I remember feeling a lot more hungry when I used to eat all the time. I would have these huge hunger pains that would not go away until I put something in my tummy. Now I still get hungry but it is a dulled hunger; there is no pain and no crazy feeling that I must eat something or the pain will never go away. It is really hard to explain and even harder to experience. It just doesn’t make sense to me how I feel less hungry when I am eating next to nothing. The only other problem I experienced this last week was I had a real hard time sleeping. I would be dead tired by around 9pm so I would head to bed and then toss and turn for hours finally fall asleep only to wake up three hours later wide awake. This happened two nights in a row and I found it extremely difficult to force myself to the gym on those days because I was basically a walking zombie. I am sleeping better now so I hope that was just a quick phase that will not return.
The good news is I am down 6 pounds! Woo Hoo. The bad news is I am still supposed to lose 9 more before my weigh in on the 28th. I am excited that I am finally seeing results but at the same time I am scared that I won’t meet the 15 pound goal and my surgery will have to be rescheduled. I decided to look up some message boards and blogs on the pre op diet hoping to find some answers to my own fears about what happens if you don’t meet your goal weight only to find myself more frustrated. If you are going through this process I would caution you to go out and search for information on message boards because what I have found is that nothing is consistent. The pre op diet discussions I have found range from people not having to do anything before surgery (what the crap why do they not have to lose weight and suffer through the “crazy diet”) to some people being on only liquids (at least I can have vegetables) all the way to being on a strict Adkins style diet for 6 months (no way no how). I really don’t understand why there is such an extreme between the diets that lap band patients are asked to do before the surgery. The other frustrating part was that many people said that they cheated on their diets all the time and were still able to have the surgery. I am just not willing to take that risk. I would be devastated to go in on the 28th only to find out that my surgery would be canceled.
I did call my nurse earlier in the week when I had only lost 3 pounds and was super concerned that the weight wasn’t coming off faster. We played phone tag for the afternoon because I was on conference calls all day. I finally asked the receptionist if there was any way I could talk to the nurse because I was leaving for the day and really needed some reassurance that what I was doing was right. The receptionist told me that my nurse was still with patients but maybe she could answer my questions. I told her my concern of only losing three pounds and already being on the crazy diet for a week and half. She asked me to list what I had been eating and told me that those vegetables sounded fine but saw the nurse walking by and would check with her. She came back on the phone and said the nurse said all those vegetables were fine and to just keep doing what I am doing (umm thanks a lot for nothing). Needless to say I did not feel any better after that conversation then I did before I called. I was really looking for some encouragement of “you’re doing great don’t worry you will get there” or “the goal we set is just a goal if you lose anything you can still have your surgery” but I got nothing. So now I just keep trucking along. My goal this weekend is to keep myself busy. I have a lot of stuff I can do around the house which will keep my mind off food. It is also the first nice weather weekend we have had so I plan to go on walks with my dogs and daughter to get some more exercise in. One week to go think good thoughts!

One week down

So I made it through one week on this crazy diet with only one day of adding in something extra (I had to have an egg one day I was dying for something besides vegetables). I have worked out every day after work now for two weeks straight! That is pretty exciting. I am only down three pounds right now so I have twelve more to go before the big weigh in on the 28th of this month. If I don’t lose 15 pounds before the 28th they are not going to let me have the surgery which is really scary to me right now. I am getting really frustrated and I am having bad cravings… I mean really, all I want is a piece of bread!
This morning I was driving my daughter to an Easter egg hunt and I swear I had to pass every fast food chain that there is getting down to the park. I can’t begin to describe passing these fast food restaurants and having the feeling that they are daunting me saying “you know you want to eat something here, come on just one little thing won’t hurt” I then was going to take to my daughter to McDonalds for being so good today but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to go through the drive through without ordering something for myself so I had to skip that today. So instead we came home and I had a big bowl zucchini and squash; as much as you want to believe it is, it is NOT the same as french fries and a burger (torture me now).
The thing I can’t understand is that you have to be put on this crazy hard diet before you have the surgery but the reason why you are having the surgery is because no diet has every worked for you before….. Hello! Does this make any sense to anybody else? I think that the weekend is going to be very difficult to get through because this is the time I usually eat out a lot and snack on unhealthy foods all day. I just have to keep focusing on the prize at the end of this which is a healthy life. I may have to vent more tomorrow we will have to see how the rest of the weekend goes. I am off to dream about all the things I can’t eat now :(

Day 1 on "crazy diet"

Today was the first day that I began what I will now call the “crazy diet.” I was very prepared to start today but I have to admit it didn’t go as well as I hoped. I began my day with my protein drink which I was only able to get about half down before I almost threw up in the kitchen sink. It had the worst after taste ever it was so bitter I don’t know how I am going to get it down in the future. I will be looking at different brands and flavors I think. I guess what I did get down worked because I really didn’t start feeling hungry until about three hours later. I had a handful of carrots as a snack and they held me over for another hour and half until lunch. I wasn’t starving like I thought I would be but I was definitely hungry. I heated up my one zucchini and half a squash and broke open my first slim fast. I decided on vanilla flavor because that is what most people told me they like the best. I took my first big drink and thought to myself this isn’t so bad…. But then I took the second drink and it wasn’t that great…. The more I drank the more gross it started tasting. I have a big issue with consistencies with food and drinks and these slim fast drinks are very thick. I was only able to make it through half of that slim fast before I just couldn’t drink anymore. By about 2pm I was getting really hungry so I decided that I would try my second slim fast. This time I chose strawberry. Again at the start it tasted good but the more I drank the yuckier it tasted. I was actually able to get through most of this can and I called it good. I had a few more carrots as a snack and then I was off to work out.
The workout was the same as last week even though I had very little to eat. I didn’t get that tired so I hope that continues through the week. I may have found a contributing factor into my 1 pound weight gain. My monthly friend came early well actually within a week of the last visit so I do believe that had something to do with the extra weight. I weighed myself before I worked out today on the gym scale and I was down 2 pounds from where I was last week so that is encouraging but the scale at the gym is about 4-5 pounds more than my scale at home says. I really need to not focus on weighing myself every day. I have decided that I will only allow myself to weigh twice a week. Once at the start and once at the end of the week. I have also decided that I can’t look at this crazy diet as 3 whole weeks or I will fail. So I will be looking at it one week at a time. I just have to get through this week and then I will focus on next week.
So I guess so far so good seeing how it is only the first day. We will see how the rest of the week goes.

5 days in

So I managed to make it through 5 consecutive days of working out after work this week and let me tell you it was not easy. Today was the worst day out of all of them. I don’t know why but my body was just not into it today. I think part of it is because when I weighed myself this morning I had a gained a pound! Yup you heard right 1 pound in the wrong direction. The trainer that set up my workout program warned me that this may happen and I have experienced it before when I first started working out in the past but for some reason I thought that this time may be different boy was I wrong. So after a week of only having a small diet soda with lunch, drinking TONS of water, and going a week straight without my beloved Moxie Milky Way and apple crumb muffin I am 1 pound in the negative.
In a panic I called my nurse to let her know I was worried about meeting my 15 pound goal by the 28th. She started off addressing my concerns and then quickly asked if I had started my required diet yet. Now I am more panicked because I was told not to start this diet until 2 weeks before surgery. She assured me that it should be started 3-4 weeks before surgery to make sure that I lose the weight required. The good news is I already was planning on starting the diet next week and she said that I should be fine if I do that. You may be wondering what this diet is all about let me explain…… Every day this is all I am allowed to have starting on Monday for the next three weeks:
1 eight ounce glass of non fat milk with 2 scoops of protein powder
3 slim fast drinks
All the vegetables I can eat (minus potatoes, corn, and white beans)
At least 60 ounces of water

Yup that’s right people that is all I am allowed. The purpose of this extreme diet is to make you lose weight quickly. You see, when you have this surgery they have to lift up your liver to get to the place they put the band. I guess that when you lose weight real fast the fat comes off your liver first. They want this to happen because if you have too much fat on your liver it can actually collapse on itself when they lift it (pretty scary and motivating)
There is a much more to this diet once the surgery is completed that I will go into more detail later as I get closer. So for now I am going to prepare for the beginning of my mainly liquid diet. Luckily I already bought the slim fast. I think the lady at the cash register thought I was crazy with my 11 cases of slim fast and my huge tub of protein powder. That is about it for today. Next week should be interesting and I am sure that I will have a lot to say or rather vent at that time. Until next time…