Saturday, September 18, 2010

It's been a loooooong time...

It's been a good while since I took the time since I took the time to do this. LOTS have happened!

Today a good friend of mine said to me that I'm really looking thin - that my face is oval now. LOL!  I certainly wasn't thinkin' that I had lost any more weight.  Heck, just two weeks ago I had gained 8 pounds because I was eating poorly due to obligations at work that cause me to work LOTS of hours each day for nearly 2 weeks.   After I heard what she said, I stepped on the scale.  WHOA! I lost all of that weight I had gained and THEN SOME!  I'm now at 289 pounds! I haven't weighed this since 2003 when I was doing Weight Watchers.  It definitely feels good.

I just think it's odd that I am losing weight but not really following the "plan". I mean, I totally don't drink the protein shakes anymore. More on that later.

With the lap band, I eat pretty much whatever I want aside from fried foods. Although I do have a weakness for onion rings.  My portions are smaller.. but definitely not the portion amount I was told that I needed to eat.  I had never had an "incident" until about 3 fills ago. Those, my friend, are NOT FUN!!!! So now I avoid those foods like the plague! The culprit is beef and chicken cooked at restaurants or cafeterias.  Imagine having an 'incident" in a dining hall on campus. NOT TOO CUTE!!! The last "incident" occurred about 3 weeks ago. I had just gotten a fill and quickly learned to CHEW, CHEW, CHEW!!   I had my last fill on August 20 and since that fill, I have lost another 5 pounds of so.

One of the things I think makes my situation different is that I'm a male. A TALL male. I know the Doctor placed a "larger" band on me - so maybe that allows me some advantages. Another thing is that I have been training to run my first 5K.  I have been using a great program called, Couch 2 5K. It's a great Application for the iPhone or iPod Touch.  It was really easy to get going.  You start with running for a minute then walking a bit. You repeat this pattern each week while adding more time to the running. Eventually you will only run. I NEVER thought I'd be running, let alone running for 3 miles!  I do credit this with kicking the weight loss into high gear. I've now added weight training to the mix. I tend to work out 3 days per week for about an hour or more at a time. When I complete a strenuous work out is pretty much the only time I have a protein shake these days. However, I make sure a lot of the foods I eat have plenty of protein.  Maybe it's because I'm a male and doing strenuous workouts that I haven't lost muscle mass. Who knows - I just know that the muscles are still intact and I can still lift as much as I could before in the gym (and hopefully more soon).

There is one piece of the lap band program that I definitely maintain. I take my multivitamin, vitamin D and calcium daily.  I noticed that since surgery and the lifestyle change, I have not been sick with a cold.  That's definitely a plus!

In all, I've lost close to 60 pounds. AMAZING! I still have about 40 pounds to go - at least in my head I do. If I could shake my sweet tooth, I'd probably be much closer to my goal of 100 pounds. Oh well, such is life.