Lost - Two Small Children!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yesterday I weighed in at an amazing 136.7kg, down from 170kg just 5 short months ago. That's a loss of 33.3kg, or 73 pounds. Yay!

We saw some friends yesterday for Australia Day, they have three fabulous kids aged 2,4 & 6. When I told them how much I've lost so far, they pointed out that the 2 year old boy and six year old girl weigh that much combined! So I have lost 2 small children!! I can't imagine walking around holding them all day... it really puts into perspective how much weight I've lost. No wonder I feel lighter lol.

All else is going great. Did a week of temp data entry while I'm waiting for my 6 month contract with Telstra to begin on Feb 4. I leave for a few days in Adelaide on Thursday - spending time with one of my bestest mates. Can't wait for the change of scene!! Hope all of you are doing well, talk soon (:

Moving In The Right Direction!

Saturday rolls around again and it's time to get on the scales. Thankfully, the numbers moved in the right way this week, unlike last week when I gained 400g (almost a pound).

I am 139.4kg (305 pounds)
having lost 30.6kg (69 pounds) since Sept 1.

Hooray! I also did my measurements, as the scales have slowed down a little, and the measurements really show that I am still losing fat and gaining shape. Here they are:

AREA/DATE/MEASUREMENT----DATE/MEASUREMENT
Neck - Oct 4 / 39cm ------------------Jan 19 / 37cm (loss of 2cm)
Bust - Oct 4 / 145cm------------------Jan 19 / 131cm (loss of 14cm)
Waist - Oct 4 / 132cm ----------------Jan 19 / 119cm (loss of 13cm)
Hip - Oct 4 / 161cm ------------------ Jan 19 / 147cm (loss of 14cm)
Thigh - Oct 4 / 84cm -----------------Jan 19 / 78cm (loss of 3cm)
Calf - Oct 4 / 64cm -------------------Jan 19 / 61cm (loss of 3cm)

Overall, over these six sites, I've lost 59cm (23.2 inches for my American friends!).

I can see that I have areas to work on, obviously -- like the fact that I haven't been going to the gym regularly since I started temp work. In Feb I will start my six month contract with Telstra and should be able to get back into a proper routine with the buses, etc. I am still walking six or seven times a week with the dog, as well as the incidental exercise I do every day (not having a car can be useful sometimes lol). Also, I had white bread a couple of times this week and it is SOOO addictive, and made me feel crappy and hungry. I have started allowing myself diet soda on the weekends, as a "treat" I guess, which is also probably a reason I am not losing as quickly.

I am a work in progress! But the best word in that statement is PROGRESS. Hooray for the VSG!

Eating Out 101

I am still getting the hang of "eating out". I think since my surgery I've only eaten out four, maybe five times - not including casual lunch type "on the run" eating out, I mean actual restaurant meals where they give you metal cutlery he he.

Last night my family went out to dinner to say farewell to my sister-in-law and her baby daughter who have been visiting over the holidays. I downloaded the menu from the internet so I could plan what to have, and contemplated ordering just an appetiser. SUCH a hard decision, cause in reality the appetisers are not proper nutrition, and tend to be based around bread - which is my enemy these days. Once at the restaurant, my family decided to order a few appetisers to share, which was fine - I had a piece of bruschetta the size of a 20c piece and a scallop. Foolishly, I decided I would order as my main meal something called the "Baby Rump Steak".

I took this photo AFTER I had eaten all that I could (you can see the tiny space at the bottom left hand of the plate). Oh my goodness. It was the most ridiculously huge thing I had ever seen. Delicious though! I even managed to eat three chips/fries and a bit of salad. I think the hardest thing was watching the waitress skirt around the table trying to decide to clear 6 empty plates while one (mine!) was seemingly untouched!! I put her out of her misery after a while and asked for the steak in a doggy bag. Scruff (my pupsicle) ate well last night lol. Not sure how she felt about pepper sauce!

I can understand why some WLS patients avoid eating out. It's kind of weird watching other people eat en masse. I take so long to chew each bite that invariably some of my time is spent looking at other people eating. People eat A LOT. I know, I was one of 'em once! There is also the dilemma of the money wasting angle -- good steak is expensive wherever you are in the world, and knowing that you'll only eat a tiny portion of it makes you think twice. Even though it's good nutrition (for me) and goes down well, I do feel wasteful giving 80% of prime beef to the dog.

I guess it's part of the learning curve. I think in a larger group it's more difficult / uncomfortable. When it's just DH and me, I just eat off his plate or order an appetiser only and there's no drama. But in a bigger group it's more obvious that I'm the odd one out.

How A Person Gains 60 Pounds In 12 Months

Photo One - This is me in 1997, heart intact, fat but healthy and fit

Photo Two: Just over 12 months later I'm 60 pounds heavier and another 80 pounds is on its way...

By the way, I weighed in this morning. I gained weight!! I am now 140.2kg (308.4 pounds).

One Of The Many Things I'm Afraid Of...

With reference to my previous blog, one of the most important things in my life this year has got to be finding out how and why I put on weight, and what has made me afraid to stay thin and healthy during those rare times when I've been successful at weight loss. Warning: this could be lengthy, feel free to check out and rejoin me later when the self-discovery/rambling is over lol.

One of the worst times in my adult life, which led to a period when I gained 40kg over 12 months, was in 1997. Of course it was about a failed love affair...isn't it always ha ha. I was crazy in love, as well as just plain old crazy (pre-Zoloft days!!), and was devastated when I found out the man I had come halfway round the world for was actually attached to someone else. Of course he had neglected to tell me that BEFORE I got on the plan. Anyway. I was in a strange country, alone, and couldn't get a ticket on to London (and family) for a few weeks, and so travelled blindly (literally, sometimes, due to the incessant crying) on Amtrak around the place and ended up in Baltimore. I LOVE Baltimore. As a digression, one of the first things I saw in Baltimore was a sign that read "Whosoever I shall leave or love, whomsoever shall love or leave me, this silent grey city holds me and I am soothed". Magic.

So, I arrived in the US in July 97 around 95kg (200 pounds) and by the time I left London to return to Australia in September I had gained 25kg (55 pounds). Most of the weeks I was in the UK I laid in bed at my parents' house eating, listening to melancholy music and wondering what the F**K had happened to my life. It was such a dark time I hardly ever think about it, or talk about it, and have certainly never decided to tell the whole world about it lol.

Lately I've been realising that one of the reasons I became extremely fat (as opposed to the generally overweight person I've always been) was to protect that person who arrived in the US with everything ahead of her and returned home two months later with nothing to show for 5 years worth of dreams. I sometimes feel like that person is stuck inside me, too afraid to show her face, and I have been shoving crap into my mouth in order to forget about her, and to block out how much it killed her/me to feel that sad. Since then, I have lived a life of safety and compromise, which is much more realistic, I know. I could never have continued being such a dreamer. I was 27, it was about time I grew up I suppose... But jeez it was hard.

I worry that moving towards that 97kg mark frightens me because of the remembered pain...

I worry that if I become that person again, this life I have now won't be enough to sustain me...

I don't know how all this will end up, that's the scariest part I guess.

One of my favourite songs from 1992 (the year I met The American) is a song I still play all the time. I heard the lyrics the other day and I connected even more than usual with part of it. It's Tori Amos "Silent All These Years" and the bit I love is this:

Cause what if I'm a mermaid In these jeans of his With her name still on it
Hey but I don't care Cause sometimes I said sometimes
I hear my voice And it's been here
Silent All These Years


I'm definitely starting to hear my voice again, and use it, and listen to it. If I can learn how to not be afraid I know I will conquer this weight problem once and for all. Wow, even the idea of it is overwhelming.

Do You Wanna Know A Secret?

This week on one of my favourite message boards there has been some posting about "failure", ie: people who regain weight after weight loss surgery. http://www.obesityhelp.com/forums/amos/a,messageboard/action,replies/board_id,4856/cat_id,4456/topic_id,3491605/

In defence of the vsg, they are mostly posts from people who had the RNY, which is a different procedure entirely. But it got me to thinking how determined I am to NOT fail at this. I knew going into the surgery that the sleeve was a tool only, not a solution, and I have been trying to work through my anxieties and fears through meditation, self-help techniques, etc. I honestly feel like my addiction to food is under control now in a way that it has never been, even though I know there will always be the "urge" to overeat, my mind is so conscious of the pain and the consequences of overeating that I avoid it at all costs!

Anyway. One of the things that I believe has been a stumbling block in my previous weight loss attempts is self-sabotage, fear of failure, etc. To return to the title of this post, my deep dark secret is this: THE CURSE OF THE 30 KG!!!! (Cue haunted house music, bats squawking, etc). I have been very successful three times at losing weight. In 1990 I did Weight Watchers and lost around 25kg. In 2001 I was on Xenical and lost around 28kg. In 2005 I was on Dr Phil's Weight Loss Challenge and lost around 32kg. See a pattern?? I have only managed to lose between 25 and 35kg before I fall off the wagon, into the ditch, break my will and smooth it over with chocolate. I am so scared of the 30kg curse... I won't relax again with my weight loss until I am well and truly past 35kg. Even though I KNOW that this time I physically can't regain that weight, it still freaks me out. I said to Gorgeous Jon (surgeon extraordinaire) at my first appointment that I have no trouble at all losing weight, I just suck at keeping it off!

This time is different though, for a whole stack of reasons. This surgery is revolutionary, to me, as it takes the "hard" part (limiting my food intake) out of my hands so I can concentrate my energy on the mental issues (and jeepers they are many lol). I need to work out why I am so terrified of being "thin". I think it's partly a reaction to being malnourished for two years while at boarding school. I'm not exaggerating! Years later there was an investigation into the budget of the school and although $4 a day was set aside for each student's food, in reality only $1.20 was spent. The rest went into the headmaster's daughter and her rotten pony club (well, that's my theory ha ha!). We lived on utter rubbish, mostly starchy carbs supplemented by junk food (starchy carbs) we bought from our pocket money. During that time I started leaving a healthy weight/BMI behind, and have left it in the dust.

Well, I won't bore you with all my weird revelations and anecdotes! Rest assured that this weight loss journey is at least 50% mental, and I'm workin' it. Hope y'all are too! Drop me a line and let me know how you're going fellow travellers xxx

Weigh In Once More

Weighed in this morning at...

139.8kg
which is another kilo lost for good! Goodbye to the 140s, I won't EVER see you again!

My total weight loss since September 07 is 30.2kg. Since surgery, around 16 or 17kg I think?

All is well in the world of Lil and my T4. New favourite snack is popcorn (low fat), I think it has some fibre in it which is always good he he. I am still eating five small meals a day, which works better for me and my metabolism even though I know it's not recommended. I usually have:

Breakfast: poached egg on non-wheat sprouted bread with tsp butter
Morning Snack: slice of low fat ham or salami with a slice of low fat cheese
Lunch: homemade vegetarian wholegrain pizza (1 or 2 slices) with low fat fetta cheese
Afternoon Snack: cup of popcorn
Dinner: steak (palm size) and salad with low fat dressing, or tuna and salad, or roast lamb with vegies (except potato as I'm off white carbs now - hooray)

I have no idea, really, how much that is as far as calories or fat or fibre is concerned! It feels right for me at the moment, and if/when it stops working I will re-address it. I don't have to go back to see my surgeon Gorgeous Jon, or my dietician, until May. By then I am planning to have lost another 15kg AT LEAST. I am doing a nightly meditation/visualisation CD by Jon Gabriel (www.thegabrielmethod.com) who lost about 80kg, maybe more I don't remember exactly. It basically gets you to visualise your ideal body, and to switch your mind and body into fat loss mode, because if your mind and soul aren't prepared to be thin, are afraid of losing the fat, then any success will always be short-lived. It makes a lot of sense to me. I've always been apprehensive about being truly fit and healthy, so I'm working on all those obstacles as well as the physical challenge!

Catch you guys soon xxx

The New Year Of No Resolutions

I've been watching some TV today, being New Year's Day and all I'm feeling slack. And I couldn't get over how many weight loss and exercise machine ads there were on TV!! At least two or three per ad break -- Tony Ferguson, Kate Morgan, Jenny Craig, all those ab-thingummys. My mum pointed out that people will have made the new year's resolution to lose weight and get fit, so the ads are all targeting that market! How sad and annoying. Because as we all know, those are not long-term solutions.

I am so happy that 2008 is my year of NO RESOLUTIONS. I don't need to wish or hope for weight loss, because I'm well on my way. Probably should make a resolution to get a darn job he he. I have another temp contract starting on Monday, for two weeks, so that will tide us over. I'm fairly sure one of the interviews I have this week will produce something permanent. In the meantime, more time in the day for walking! I got a new IPOD for Christmas, which holds 1000 songs, and have been having a ball listening as I walk. Motivational and fast-moving music really makes a difference for me. I always listen to the Madonna song "Die Another Day" -- it has such a good beat and the words make me feel like I can conquer anything. Loving life!!!!!!