Now, THIS is a number I had forgotten: 90! 90.2kg today. 5 months post surgery. My new quality of life continues to amaze me. The number of non scale victories keeps climbing!
Victories
I can stand with my feet close to each other, even touching each other.
I can see my feet while standing.
I painted my toenails all by myself, not even straining. I cannot remember the last time I did that, it must have been 2010 or thereabouts.
I can cross my legs, although so far just putting my ankle over my knee.
I continue to be amazed by how easily I can reach in the shower, it is now natural.
I can put on my pants while standing up, rather than sitting down, dropping them on the floor, stepping into them and pulling them up (yes, that had been my life for uncountable years, I just wanted to give a flavour of what I mean when I say it’s life changing).
I walk to the shopping center without thinking twice, just checking I have enough time for the trip; door to door it takes me 13 minutes.
My belly doesn’t touch the steering wheel anymore, and not only that: I had to raise the seat as there’s less bum now, and I could hardly look out the windshield otherwise.
I have energy. Boy what a difference does that make. Not only do I now keep the house tidy all the time, I now clean the house together with my cleaner (a few hours between the two of us and the full place sparkles - I became house proud and she cannot believe her eyes). But this energy translated also into wanting to do things, planning them and doing them. New bathrooms, new carpet on the stairs, painted walls, painted doors. And this is happening just this summer; I’m planning more for the autumn and winter.
I cannot think of anything else so far, but I’ll report on it as things happen or as I remember, as always.
In the kitchen
I continue to cook, loving it and spending tons of time researching and inventing recipes, then cooking it all, even if just for my boyfriend and me, although I cherish having friends at dinner as an excuse to go above and beyond. I don’t feel limited in what I eat. I only exclude deep fried food or high sugar content for fear of dumping, which hasn’t happened in months, luckily.
The only food I cannot have anymore is, strangely, chicken, whichever way it’s cooked. I take two bites and then the restriction kicks in fiercely and nausea starts. Not that I can eat a lot of the rest, the restriction is real, and high protein food such as any meat or fish is difficult, it’s almost impossible to eat fresh egg-based pasta, while I am surprised at the amount of risotto that goes down (a full ladle spoon!). Seafood goes down well: mussels, scallops, prawns, etc. When I say it goes down well I mean that I can have 2 scallops, and that’s my dinner; however it doesn’t make me uncomfortably full, nor the restriction kicks in fiercely.
I wasn’t eating fruit, almost at all, for these five months. Not a good idea, but I was afraid of “wasting” the stomach space on non-protein content. Given however that liquids or yoghurt go down well, I bought a Nutribullet and I now have a smoothie every morning, polishing a punnet of berries and a small banana daily, with added protein powder and soy yogourt.
Risk of a stall
There are days and days in which I still cannot sleep for more than 5 hours, and in any case it's sleep broken by breaks during which I am so awake I go downstairs for a while. Days in which I don’t reach my water intake target of close to two litres. Well, after such a period, the scale hardly moves.
Conversely, I lost 1kg from Wednesday to today Sunday: I drank my water and took time during the day for long naps. I work late into the evening, so long breaks during the day are always possible, if not important to last until 10pm at times. If I’m not careful with sleep and water I risk getting into a stall, and that (although I’m warned it’s to be expected) would be really demoralising.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to resume my food diary, maybe a look at a two weeks period compared with scale readings might help me see if I can make variations to my diet in order to speed up the weight loss even more.
I feel so far it’s not really necessary, as the weight is going down, however the closer I will be at target (a mere 10kg away) the harder it will be.
Most certainly I will have to do it if I want to exceed the target, which I so want to do.
Support
I continue my sessions with my psychologist. Hard work each time, however he is so good that it’s worth the effort. Pity I didn’t meet him years ago.
My personal trainer let me down for the summer, problems with childcare etc, so for now I walk. It’s still very good, and each time I notice my sense of balance is improving - I didn’t even know it was going actually, who knows if it was due to the weight, or the lack of exercise, or both. One of these days I'll take the courage to walk fast, so far it's at a leisurely pace.
Friends and family continue to support me, lovingly accepting me despite my frequent messages when I discover yet another non scale victory I want to share. Or when I take yet another selfie and send them the Before and After. Boy, I even sent them a picture of my newly painted toenails 😂😂😂!
Pictures
Well, I will boast publicly, in the end. I’m so proud of what I’m achieving. I’ll collect all the pictures, date them, write down the weight I was at the time, and get them together in a slideshow, or a video. I feel twenty years younger. I look at myself in the mirror and touch my face: "is it really you?".
It's so worth it!
I want to shout from the rooftops to all my fellow obese friends how worthy it is, that all the efforts and difficulties that such an operation requires have an immense reward, that it is possible to be reborn and that they will discover how the new life is so much better than when they were young and healthy for two reasons: you forgot those feelings as then everything was just normal, and you will appreciate all the new feelings because of the many years of near-disability the weight brought you.
People often say they wish they’d done it before. I don’t. There is a huge effort involved, you need to research well in advance, to be prepared for the pain, to face a complete new stomach restriction with its discomforts, and of course you need to be prepared mentally for all the upheaval.
I took a long time to reach this decision for these reasons, and I’m happy I did.
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