An NSV to finish up the month

Since I started working out at the wellness centre I've been mortified that i've been physically unable to grab my foot from behind to stretch my quads. I hate hate hate that i always have to have my trainer 'give me a leg up' so to speak. I've been determined to do it myself.
and today i did it! well only with my left leg. but i did it. felt kinda pathetic to be so excited about it, but as terrell (trainer) said, it shows progress.
spent much of my torture training session today with terrell (who's a physiotherapist) doing deep tissue massage on my left knee. when he had me doing lunges i was getting a sharp pain in the muscle running along the upper inside. ouch. he worked it out. we figure the pain was from saturday morning's insanely rough boatride to the exuma cays for the start of the kayak for cancer event. it was BAM! BAM! BAM! for an hour and a half. ouch!!! the next day i was so sore i wondered if i'd actually done the kayaking!
btw - i'm super proud of my dad. he and his partner finished the 32 mile course in about 9.5 hours. to call it grueling is not doing what they accomplished justice. best part is my dad alone has raised more than $8,500  in sponsorships for the local cancer society. so proud!
ok ladies. send lotsa positive vibes that i get the right answer from the insurance company... should hear from them by monday.

I'm getting healthier!

After my torture training session this afternoon, I asked my nutritionist (she owns the wellness centre where I work out) if she would do my body composition again.

I have lost about 30 or so pounds, but I was curious to know if my body fat percentage had changed much. When I started mid-June, I was over 42 BMI. Today I was 37. something. That takes me out of the morbidly obese category.

When I started, my body fat percentage was 45.7%. Today I am 41.6%. Doesn't seem like a HUGE change when we're aiming for somewhere between 25 and 30%, but according to Dr Patty, that's MAJOR progress that she doesn't usually see in such a short period of time. As she explained, fat is the hardest thing to actually lose.

I walked out of there on cloud nine!!!

Ok... I've packed my stuff up, have my bathing suit and stuff at the ready for my 3am wake up call. Tomorrow is the kayak fundraiser. My dad is one of a number of people kayaking from Ship Channel Cay in the Exumas to Nassau. I am going on a support boat and dock call is 3:30am. good lord what have i gotten myself into????? We are likely to be on the water for about 10-12 hours. Those of you who pray, please do. Those of you who don't, send positive vibes :)

Set for Sept 22

To get my band! Well, that's the date the surgeon and I have set. Please, please, please everyone send positive vibes that the insurance company comes through and approves my surgery.
Just found out at my appt that my insurance company just denied another woman, saying she needed to do a year long programme. W.T.F.!?!?!?! If someone is diagnosed with heart disease do they say go off for a year and treat yourself and then we'll approve your quadruple by-pass?
Anyway, I work in news and so we're hoping that, and the fact that the ins company recommended this other woman work with my nutritionist, not realising she's part of the lapband programme, will work in my favour.
So fingers crossed.
I do have my hospital form - diagnosis is morbid obesity. Oh dear lord how I HATE that term!
Anyway, assuming all goes well, I will be checking into the hospital at 9am on the 22nd and surgery is scheduled for 10am. Great thing is my surgeon says I don't have to stay overnight in the hospital unless there are any complications. My mom will take much better care of me than the hospital nurses will :)

oh... and we didn't set a date, but my surgeon recommends I go out and have a meal with the patient advocate to really get an idea of what eating will be like post-op..... chew, chew, chew... the length of time it takes to get through a meal... the tiny portions. I think it's probably a good idea, besides, I like her.

oh.... and I did ask the patient advocate if they shave your lady bits for this surgery and she said yes, that i can go ahead and do it myself if i want. i made her laugh when i told her i was going to get waxed because i don't intend to be dealing with crotch itch along with all the other post op pains!

oh.... and turns out my doc is a stickler for the 2-weeks nothing but liquids before surgery rule. so guess who's going to have a sucky trip to atlanta! I'm going the 14-18th... just before surgery! Ah well. I also asked what his post op food protocol is and it's 1 week clear liquids, 1 week full liquids, 1 week pureed foods, 1 week soft foods and then on to regular food. so that's 6 weeks of no chewing for this chica. just gotta keep my eye (and mind) on the prize.

I have a date...

with my surgeon. this afternoon. to hopefully set my surgery date!
So hopefully later today I will be posting the date I'm set to get my lapband. Feels like I've been waiting on this forever, even though i only started the journey in mid-June.
Of course I realise that Dr D and I can set all the dates we want, but if the insurance company wants to act the ass, ain't nothin happenin. I still don't understand why my doc waits until after we've had this appointment to start submitting everything to insurance. wouldn't it be better if i walked in today and was told 'great news, they've approved it, now let's look a a calendar'????? ah well.

Thanks Catherine and Christine for responding to my last post about giving clothes away. At least I know that I'm either a) not crazy, or b) not alone in my craziness! I think once I've had the surgery I'll feel more comfortable getting rid of too big clothes.... that and another 2 sizes down :)

My work trip to Atlanta has been set for September 14-18. I've told my boss I'll let him know if I can go on the October 17 trip once I get my surgery date squared away. Ideally I'll be having surgery the week of the 20th September so I have almost a month before needing to travel again. Also would like to have it then because one of my bff's who happens to be one of my biggest supporters in this whole journey is having some eyelid surgery on the 21st and will be down and out for 2 and a half weeks too. I'd have someone to play with while I'm recuperating.

Saturday is going to be interesting.... up at 3:30am to get on a boat and go to the northen tip of the Exuma Cays to spend about 10 hours in a very slow moving boat. My dad and a friend of mine are participating in a 32-mile kayak event from exuma to Nassau to raise money for the Cancer Society. My mom, a friend of mine and I are going along in my dad's boat (captained by another good friend) as one of the support fleet. Pray the weather's not rough! Whenever we get back (they figure they will be paddling for about 10 hours and it's a 1 1/2 hour boat ride down there) there's a beach party to raise even more money. All for a good cause.

So tonight I'm joining my parents and my dad's kayak partner, his wife and kids for their big carb loading dinner at a nice local italian restaurant. I, of course, won't be doing pasta, but will find something else to eat.

Ok. enough rambling. Will post surgery date and official doc's scale weight later today. this morning my scale was 226.4 - down 36.1 in 10 1/2 weeks with no band yet :) Not too shabby

Giving clothes away... a dilemma and a question

Something Sam said in the comments section on my last post about going down a size got me to thinking..... am I ready to give away the clothes I've only just grown out of?

In short. No.... DEFINITELY not before I've had surgery.... I just don't trust myself enough yet to run the risk of having nothing big enough to fit in the event I start gaining weight again.

Can you tell this is a 'been there, done that, have a few t-shirts' moment?!?!

At what point did you guys feel comfortable giving away too large clothing? Or am I the only one who's felt this way?

I went clothes shopping....

In my closet.... and came out with a bunch of 'new' clothes!

Yesterday morning I was out and about (oat and aboat if you're Canadian :) ) and realised that not only was I constantly pulling up my white size 20 capris, but I could pull them down without unbuttoning or unzipping (I waited til I got home to test this theory).

Clearly I am no longer a size 20, so I pulled all of those out of the closet and start rooting through to see what else I have and figure out what fits. My 18's are comfy (if *gasp* a wee bit loose) and at least one pair of 16's fit nicely though all the others I'd say are about 10-15lbs away from wearing in public.

I still have a pile of jeans on my bed to try on (it was just too hot last night to bother with tugging on and off denim).

Today I'm wearing a lovely pair of khaki slacks that I don't think I'd worn more than a couple of times before I outgrew them.

Nice to be in fitted clothing again as my 20's were quite clownish they were so baggy.

The only bad thing is I realised by going through the contents of my closet that I've got a decent supply down through size 14, but once those are too big (hard to imagine that ever happening right now) I'm going to have to start buying a few 12's to get me through.

I LOVE closet shopping!

Delish! pics of my first juicing attempt

I've been playing with the Vitamix Blender quite a bit with amazing results. this morning i decided to give the juicer a whirl. I know to watch for calories, so decided to make a red apple.golden apple.lime.ginger juice. This is what I started out with

Then One by one, I plunged the pieces of fruits and veggies into my juicer and this is what i ended up with

It's amazing just how dry that pulp is. gonna pack it up in a container and dump it on mom's compost this afternoon.

And the final product. I only had about a half cup and put the rest in the refrigerator.