itty bitty portions... and poop

This is my plate from Thanksgiving. When I was serving it up, I was chuckling because I knew my eyes (and the serving spoons) were bigger than my belly... but I was determined to take what I wanted and eat what I could. Now I realise why my friends were all laughing at me.... I thought I'd overdone it and there was really nothing on the plate to start with.... I ate a good amount by eating sloooooowly and chewing well.... but had to share the pic because it makes me laugh out loud!!!

on a completely different topic.... if you've read my blog from the start you know about my bowel issues. well they've gotten far worse post surgery and fill since now i really am eating mostly protein and not getting a lot of fibre in. this weekend i decided it was time for some more smooth move tea.... that stuff really does the job, but i need to find a solution that will work. i can (and certainly should) add more fruits and veggies in by juicing in the mornings... but i know that in juicing i'm stripping out much of the fibre that would help with this particular problem. anyone else suffer in this way? anyone have any ideas????

the best NSVs EVER!!!!

At thanksgiving dinner with a group of friends last night one of the friends told me that tomorrow she has her first appt with a nutritionist and wellness centre (different one in our programme than the one i was assigned to). She said she's been so inspired by my progress that she just has to get on board. I'm not sure if she's a candidate for surgery, but the fact that she's taking control by making the necessary appointments is so fantastic. she said when she called to make the appt, the nutritionist asked if she didn't want to wait until january after the holiday season.... she said no 'jessica advised me to get in now so that i can get through the holidays in a sensible way and not end up with another 10-15lbs to lose in the new year!'

and just got a message from another friend who was there last night. she was banded 3 years ago and was unfilled when she got pregnant. well she's now cleared for a fill and after talking with me about it, she too has decided to go get one BEFORE christmas!

these nsv's outweigh all the compliments and being called 'skinny' that I got last night by far. i'm so happy that i was open about what i'm doing because in addition to it not being a burden of a secret for me, it's inspiring others to make similar changes in their lives!


thanksgiving dinner was great. we had wayyyyyyyy too much food. always happens when you do potluck. i had a little bit of only the things i really wanted to try or things i can't get any time.... i didn't come close to clearing my plate and took ages to eat.

strange thing happened though. I did the same with dessert. we had sooooooo many delicious looking homemade options and i took a tiny bit of a few of them to try. for some reason they all tasted really tinny and fake.... i didn't enjoy them so i stopped and tossed the plate. would never have done that in my past life!

I feel like last night i ate far more than i've been able to since getting my fill and there wasn't a single sensation of being stuck. at all. i realise that this could be because i've learned the hard way that i need to really chew, chew chew and take it sloooooooooooooooowwwwww. so not sure if i'm just learning how to eat and so able to get more in, or if i need a fill. i definitely need to start measuring all my food out so i can get a sense of how much is going in.

mornings are still rough though... it's 9:30 and i've eaten 1/4 banana and can't seem to get any more in!

ahhhhhh life with a band!

turkey for the rest of my life!

had my first thanksgiving dinner last night. please note that we do not officially celebrate Thanksgiving here in The Bahamas but have a national tendency to adopt whatever traditions look good to us :)

it was at my service club's monthly dinner meeting. it's always buffet style, but i went prepared with tupperware containers anyway. i filled up my plate with mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, turkey and LOTS O gravy. ate a little bit of everything and was satisfied. i'd bought two dinner tickets because i'd invited a friend who never showed, so went back and got more turkey to supplement my starch and veggie leftovers and drowned that in LOTS O gravy and now have turkey to last the week.

Perhaps I should mention that a group of friends and I are doing Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow night too and so it doesn't look like i'll be having a meal that doesn't include turkey for a while.

an old flame came online yesterday to tell me that i look awesome. he stopped by our bake stall over the weekend... said he almost didn't recognise me and that he had to tell his wife who i was! love those kinds of compliments.

another close friend told me that a pick of me from earlier this year popped up on the side of her facebook page the other day and she almost died. as she pointed out, when you see someone all the time, you don't realise how big they are. it's only now that i'm a size 14 that she realises how big i was when i was pushing out of a 20!

So so so so glad I got my life on track!!!!!

it's official

i am a size 14 :)

after being told all weekend that my pants were simply too baggy, i braced myself and pulled on a pair of 100% cotton khakis that had no stretch and they fit nicely. even, dare i say, a wee bit loose! so today I pulled another pair of size 14's out of the back of the closet and lo and behold... they FIT! yeeeeeee ha. now only problem is i only have three pairs of 14s....

pretty pictures

a friend just emailed out pics taken at his parents' house last night. and for the first time in a very long time, i didn't cringe when i saw pics of me. in fact, i like them so much i'll share them.

Even from the back.... starting to look like a normal size chick!

The Jollification was this weekend. I baked 5 pumpkin rolls and about 150+ cupcakes for our bake stall. All went. It was a long weekend. I feel broken up after baking for days, spending both saturday and sunday working the booth for most of the day and then being out friday, saturday and sunday nights!

this is one of those weekends when you bump into people you haven't seen in ages and so there were lots of people who haven't seen me since before i started losing the weight. one girl i saw said hi and then came right back to tell me she'd only said hi to be polite, but it wasn't till a few minutes later that she realised who i was! got lots of compliments and was told many times that the jeans i was wearing were too big. today i'm officially wearing a pair of size 14 pants :)

hope you all had a nice weekend and i know most of you have thanksgiving celebrations to prep for. hoping your bands get you through with no major problems!

194

yes. 194. on the heavier scale! and on my home one too. That's 4lbs down since last week Friday. Things are moving. I did hop on the other crazy scale at the doc's office and it showed me at 189.4...... but i'm sticking with my 194.

all of a sudden i look years younger. or so people are telling me now all of a sudden. since i'm pushing 40 i'm all for that.

i'm rapidly growing out of clothes. officially have more pants in my 'to give away' pile than in my closet right now. this is a great problem to have, but i don't go to florida for another 3 weeks so hopefully i have enough to get me through then!

I'm really enjoying being back in the gym. shaundra kicks my butt and i love it!

ok. back to work. gonna be a few days before i get back on here for any length of time.... it's the big bake stall weekend and i've got tons more baking to do tonight and decorating cupcakes tomorrow night then working the stall on the weekend. fun times

Betsy knows best

She KNEW i had no business eating a whole slice of pumpkin roll in order to determine if it tasted good enough to sell at a charity bakesale. so what did she do? rejected it and back up came most of it. along with lots n lots of slime. that was a good hour ago and i still feel as if another trip to the bathroom could be in order. one of these days i'll learn. maybe.

good thing is, yes, it tasted great so tomorrow i'm going to whip up as many as i can be bothered to do. they'll freeze well for next weekend's bake stall. thursday night i'll be up to my ears making rainbow cupcakes. friday night/saturday morning frosting them. both saturday and sunday i'll be there all day from about 8am working the stall. hoping we raise lots of money to fund our group's various charitable endeavours.

this morning i went to our second lapband support group meeting and once again enjoyed it. it's such a diverse group, but because we share something so fundamental to our lives, we enjoy getting to know each other and sharing stories - good and bad.

spending this evening trying to pick out paint colours for the new house. who knew there were so many colours in the world. yikes.... i'm feeling overwhelmed and wishing i could afford an interior designer to do this part!

Ciao for now

Riddle me this

my weight has gone up but I didn't have a gain....

confused?

well if you recall at last week's official weigh in the scale I'd been using was freaking out so we kind of had to guesstimate. well this morning it was acting up again so I decided to give up on that scale and use the one that weighs higher, but seems to be more reliable.

so last week I was 194. this week, 198. but I was 199-point-something on that scale last week so I know I am down another pound.

it was nice to see that I was under 200 on All three scales in the office this morning.

even though the weight loss has been about a pound a week fro 2 weeks, all of a sudden people are noticing. this was a week of compliments! and ya know what, if it's going to be 1 lb a week, I'll take it gladly!

had my first training session since surgery this evening afterwork. it felt really good and I hadn't lost all my mojo as I'd feared! going mondayand wedneday next week too.

oh... and I got the courage to try on those 14's in the closet. they fit. they can be buttoned and zipped! I figure about 5 - 10 more lbs before I can say they officially fit!

Life and stuff

I know it's been a while since i posted, but i've been so busy.

spent all my free time last week packing up all my worldly belongings for Saturday's moving day. best idea i think i've ever had was having my dad hire four of his warehouse guys to come and do the heavy lifting. they got the job done!

by sunday we're moved the rest of it to my parents' house where i am once again living until the new house is ready at the end of the year. i have all the stuff i need in my old bedroom in a tiny closet with a tiny dresser so now need to really sort through all my clothes again to see what no longer fits and clear it out.

on that note... discovered a pair of size 16 avenue black jeans in my closet today.... wore them to work, but really.... they're ready for the too big pile! though i just don't feel like i'm ready for 14's.... ah well.

my mom was away this weekend and i ended up eating out with dad quite a bit... he's thoroughly amused and fascinated by my new eating habits. saturday lunch time we went to the yacht club for lunch and both ended up having the stewed conch from the buffet. i had a small spoon of grits, a bit of hte conch and a piece of johnny cake. ended up eating maybe a third of what was in the bowl and two bites of the bread.... and was full. so i asked the waiter for a to-go container. he was so concerned that i really hadn't taken much from the buffet that he went and filled the container about halfway before brining it to me to put my leftovers in. let's just say i'm still eating stewed conch for breakfast.

i am eating tiny portions, not snacking and making really good choices. i'm getting in walking at least every other day. still the weight isn't falling off of me. i am surprised that it's so slow, but not bothered. i know i'm going to get there and stay there. i know i somehow need to up my water in take again. still not getting in enough and it doesn't help that it's cooled down a bit and is freezing in my office so i'm not as thirsty.

left work a half hour earlier today so i could make it home before dark and get a walk in. ended up taking my parents' 85lb boxer for a half hour walk. no. scratch that. he took me. it was great because i was forced to walk a lot faster than i would on my own. tomorrow night is maddy's turn. she's smaller, but not quite as good on a leash so should be interesting!

ok. i'm done rambling.

Jerk Chicken...

...is not as nice when it's coming back up. just thought I'd share that with you.

Weekly weigh in

And down another pound. At least we think I am.

The surgeon's office has a couple of scales. The two i typically hop on are about 5lbs off from one another. I use the weight on the lowest recording one. The highest showed me down about a pound (perhaps and a few ounces) from what I was on that one last week. But the other scale was acting all stoopid and giving different numbers (pounds apart) each time. So we figured that based on the higher recording scale and my home scale that i'm down about a pound.

funny how once upon a time i'd have been bothered by not having an exact record of my loss. this time i'm not sweating it. i do hop on my home scale daily, but that's just so i can be as on top of things as i can be. i know that if i suddenly see things going up that i need to take check and get back on track. i don't beat myself up over higher numbers and don't get out of control crazed and excited over lower ones.

it's nice not to be as crazy about weight and food and all these such matters. i'm just doing what i should be doing and letting the band and my efforts take their course.

am up to my eyeballs in packing tape and boxes this week. we're moving all my furniture and boxes into my parents' warehouse on saturday morning so i have got to get it done by then. so starting saturday night i'll be camping out at my parents' house until my new house is complete at the end of the year.

Next week... once all this madness is done, i intend to get back into the gym at my nutritionists' wellness centre. I miss the butt kicking and know that ramping up my exercise will get the weight loss going at a nice clip again

ewwwwwww..... YUCK

So I've now had two stuck episodes. Not fun.

First was with some fish late last week. Had three small bites. thought i'd chewed well. stuck. i get the stuck feeling right in my throat... not in the middle of my chest as is the case with others. well it didn't come back on its own, but the minute i put some effort in, up came the well chewed fish... and lots of that icky slime i've only before heard about.
the second time was saturday morning while having breakfast in our little hotel restaurant with my dbf. we were in Harbour Island which is renowned for its bread. So stupid me has a bit. it was lightly toasted so i thought i'd be safe. not so. stuck. my dbf said i turned bright pink as i excused myself upstairs to the room and up it came.
not pretty.

other than that, betsy and i have been doing ok... me learning how she works and all.
we had a lovely weekend away and i must say, that no matter how much you read up on this whole banding thing, no one can truly prepare you for just how little you're going to be able to eat. it's amazing.
that said, i truly enjoyed every bit that i did eat. including the hazlenut and chocolate truffle for dessert saturday night. it's so nice to really take the guilt out of the occasional indulgence.
had a lot more juices than i usually have while i was away this weekend so it's back to water water water... don't need those empty calories all the time!