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!