Category: weight loss surgery

Feeling Okay

My stomach is okay today. No issues at all. I am almost willing to declare that whatever started going wrong two days ago, and then went really seriously wrong yesterday, has passed. It’s 3:13pm and I’m an hour passed lunch. I have taken in 40 ounces of liquid and 56.86 grams of protein. Everything is on pace for a successful day.

So the question left to me is, did I do something wrong to cause my problems over the last two days, or was it a bug that I possibly caught from Harry as he was sick to his stomach all weekend. I was going to assume it was something I did wrong until Jen told me that she’s feeling sick to her stomach today. I think it might have been a bug after all. That almost makes me feel better about the whole thing, other than the fact Jen is feeling sick today, which sucks completely.

I am feeling well enough tonight to go out and run an errand for Jen, even though it bums me out on an unrelated level. She bought something from her favorite computer/electronics store recently but it needs to be returned. I am going to return it for her. The bummer part is that the store is in Cambridge, right down the street from Harvard Square, and right across the river from Boston’s Back Bay. I have been wanting to take a camera to both of those places for months now but haven’t had a chance. I could do it tonight but it will be dark and I won’t have time to stop and that makes it a two strikes and you’re out situation. Maybe I’ll be able to take some pics from stop lights. I’ll bring my DSLR and put it in auto mode, just in case. I won’t bring film though.

Speaking of pictures, the weather is going to be crappy tomorrow. No sunrise pics this time. It’s not supposed to rain until mid-morning though, so maybe I’ll take the film camera out to a couple of places around town. We’ll see. The DSLR will go to Vermont with me on Sunday but I don’t think the film camera will. We’re not planning on spending much time in Burlington so there won’t be many opportunities for picture taking.

On a final, also unrelated note, our bathroom has a floor again:

93/365

Food

I just finished eating 2.8 ounces of scrambled eggs. I feel okay. My stomach is a little funny, but I think that might be due to hunger more than anything else. I only managed about 11 grams of protein and that’s not enough so I will supplement later. We’ll see how that goes.

In honor of going back to soft food/puree stage, for breakfast at least, I also brought out this old friend.

DSCN2723

Ah, the stopwatch. I remember you, old friend.

Feeling a Little Better

It’s 6:11am, I’ve been up for a little over an hour, no stomach pain or discomfort or anything like that. So far so good. I’ve had eight ounces of water and my morning vitamins. That’s close to equaling my intake from all of yesterday. All I managed over the whole day was eight ounces of protein shake and five ounces of sugar free Gatorade. That’s it. No food at all.

I went to bed at about 7:30 last night. I was exhausted all day, probably from not eating and stressing out over feeling sick. Who knows. I fell asleep on the couch after I punched out of work too, but only for about 30 minutes. Whatever was going wrong in my tiny little rewired, redesigned stomach just wouldn’t go away. I don’t know if it was something I did or if it was the bug Harry had over the weekend, and I don’t care. I just want it to be over. It feels like it might be, but I don’t know.

What I do know is that I have to eat today. I have to hit my goals. 60 ounces of liquid (eight down, 52 to go) and 80 grams of protein (zero down and 80 to go), and I think I want to eat real food, not protein bars… though I will probably need to supplement the actual food because I don’t know how much I’m going to be able to handle and the protein shakes require milk and my half gallon of skim milk expired yesterday and I think this might be the rare case where the expiration date actually matches the day it starts going bad. Just a hunch, ya know? I think I am going to try some scrambled eggs for breakfast. What do you think? Yesterday I reverted back to liquid stage, today I will revert back to soft/puree stage? Sounds like a plan.

I Feel Like Garbage

I don’t feel any better at all. I might actually feel a little worse, but that’s probably just me being overdramatic. I’m leaving work sick in about nine minutes. I’m also exhausted, sort of all of a sudden. I’ve just run out of gas (figuratively) while dealing with gas (literally) pain. What a screwed up day.

I have to join a conference call at 3:30. We’re going to get an update on Dad’s rehab and I need to listen in. I would very much like to take a nap for the 90 minutes between now and then, but our bedroom suite is still under construction. Although having said that, I haven’t heard any noise coming from that part of the house for quite a while. I wonder if they are putting down floor tile… or if they left for the day. I’ll go check when I punch out.

I had eight ounces of protein shake between 9:00 and 9:30. I opened a bottle of sugar free Gatorade at 11:00 and over the course of three hours I’ve probably managed four ounces of it. If that. I am feeling pretty dehydrated, but it’s not bad enough to outdo the stomach ache.

Today blows, though I did see a critical issue come to one of my staff members and I figured it out without even looking at the data. I told him what I thought the problem would be and I was totally right. I feel smaht… even with a stomach ache screwing up my entire brain. Ugh.

Liquid Diet Day?

I’ve been up and about for almost four hours and I haven’t had anything to eat yet. My stomach is still pretty unhappy with me. It might be a little better than it was when I wrote the last post, but it’s still not good. Gas. Pain. Not nauseous at this point but probably not far off.

I haven’t eaten anything yet and I haven’t had my morning vitamins. I did chew up a couple of Gas X pills in the hopes that would help. It hasn’t. Not really at least. The only other time I took Gas X was during the first couple of weeks post-surgery and it eliminated all of my stomach discomfort almost instantly. I was hoping for more of that. Nope.

I am thinking that today is a liquid diet day. Back when we went from the stage one (liquid) diet to the stage two (puree) diet they told us if we have a bad day to just go back to stage one. Well, I am at stage… infinity? Whatever, and I am thinking of reverting back to stage one until my guts stop bitching. I have half a protein shake on a coaster on my desk next to me. I’ve had a few small sips. So far so good.

Wish your humble narrator luck.

DSCN2722

Another Bad Day in the Making?

Last night I managed to hit both of my food goals, despite all of the difficulties I mentioned in the previous post. Unfortunately it required me drinking a 32 ounce bottle of water starting at a little before 10:00pm. It went down without a problem, and I felt really good after it was done, but I did it in about an hour and a half and that is just too fast. 15 minutes later I ate some protein and that topped me over both goals.

It also had the side effect that I expected. I woke up today half an hour ago with a seriously gassy and upset stomach. I’m going to run for a while and re-watch episode three of Yellowjackets (buzz buzz buzz and all that) without having anything to eat or drink first. We’ll see how I feel about an hour from now. Hopefully all the trottin’ and joggin’ in place helps to clear things up rather than make it worse.

Yesterday’s last minute success may lead to today being another rough one, tiny-little-rewired-stomach-wise.

Wish me luck.

Bad Day All Around

I think today might be the most difficult day I’ve had since the gastric bypass surgery nearly seven months ago. Every time I eat or drink anything it’s upset my stomach. Not nausea per se, just feeling uncomfortably full. Actually, dinner has made me a little nauseous. I made it through 2.6 ounces of left over chicken before it set in. I think it’s starting to pass, but I am screwed as far as my food goals are concerned. I still need 15 grams of protein and a whopping 28 ounces of liquids before I sleep tonight. I have to pause an hour between eating and drinking though and it’s already quarter past eight. At least today’s weekly weigh in went well. I’ve got that going for me today

Other than that, today has just been the worst day.

Week 30 Weigh In

So close. So close to having milestones in every category that my stats obsessed brain looks at. I mean, so close.

Hello and welcome to the week 30 weigh in. Wednesday is weigh in day and today is Wednesday. Are you ready?

I am down 3.6 pounds. That’s fantastic. I am very happy with this week’s results. The app our bluetooth scale works with didn’t capture my weight this time. I’m not sure what’s up with that. I had to add it to my iPhone’s Health app manually, like the old days and when I say old days I mean like three weeks ago. I did not move the 10’s column for my total weight, but I came ridiculously close. My weight this morning was exactly 260 pounds. Come on! 1/10th of a pound lower and I would have flipped that six to a five. Oh well. We’ll have an early weigh in this week as Sunday is the monthiversary, and hopefully (barring any catastrophes) I should be in the two-fifties by then. Fingers crossed.

Everything else hit a milestone. My BMI dropped below 32. It is 31.6. 1.7 points away from not being obese anymore, in the BMI sense. My weight loss since the surgery moved the 10’s column and reached 171.4 pounds. My weight loss since the first weigh in also flipped the 10’s column to hit 192 pounds on the nose. Two items of note here. One “bad” one good. First the “bad.” I used the quotes because it’s not actually bad at all, it’s just a sort of warning. When I was going through the pre-surgery process I was told I could expect to lose a certain percentage of my excess weight. They gave me a range between blah and blahblah. When I calculated it out it was between 130 and 170 pounds. Now that I have hit 170 pounds I feel like I am on borrowed weight-loss-time. That’s all. Not bad, just noteworthy. It might be time to slightly alter my expectations, even though I don’t really expect to suddenly stop losing weight, you know?

Now for the good note…….

ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY POUNDS, BABIE! LET’S FREAKIN’ GOOOOOOO!!!!

Okay, so the next weigh in is Sunday December 4th. The numbers should be small, Robert. Don’t freak out. Next Wednesday will also be low numbers so don’t freak out then either, Robert. All weight loss is positive for now. The goal is to get to a healthy weight and you still have quite a ways to go before you get there. Keep up the good work.

Surprise Temptation

Jen and I just started making lasagna together. I’ve never made it before. Possibly because I don’t like it at all. While we paused to let the sauce cook I tried to have some lunch. It’s my second attempt. The first attempt ended at two bites of chicken when my stomach rebelled. I’m doing a little better now, but my stomach is starting to complain so we’ll pause for a few minutes and type up a post.

Jen had lunch while I was failing and then almost two hours went by. She asked me if I could cut her a slice of leftover Thanksgiving pie. Sure thing, love. She asked me to put a little Cool Whip on top. You know, you can’t have pie without Cool Whip. Or should I say Cool Whhhhip.

I brought out the bowl, grabbed a spoon, opened the container and was seized with an overwhelming urge to scoop out a huge spoonful and eat it.

Huh… I didn’t see that coming. I could practically taste it and I seriously wanted it. I wanted that Cool Whhhhhhhhip badly. I successfully fought off the urge, but it was so strong it was disturbing.

Unrelated note: I want to snap a picture of the new christmas lights after the sun goes down. Should I also take a film photo? It will be black and white but it will also need the tripod. With the zoom lens I’m using for this roll I may also have to stand across the street.

We’ll see.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, America! Canada, you jerks jumped the gun and had Thanksgiving a month too early so you don’t get a happy Thanksgiving today. Blah to you, kind sirs and madams.

This is traditionally my favorite holiday. I don’t know why, but it is. It’s kind of like From Russia with Love. It’s my favorite Bond movie even though Goldfinger is better. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday even though Christmas is better. What can you do. I am pretty bummed this year that I don’t get the day after Thanksgiving off. I could have. I mean, I actually did take the day off but then rescinded my time off request so that I could give the day to someone else. I mean… we could have both taken the day off, but that would have left us really short handed so I took one for the team.

The plans for today are to get up stupidly early and get my exercise in (done) and have a protein heavy breakfast (done) and then shower and shave. After I finish that I want to make brief visits to both mom and dad, then Jen and I are heading North to her parents’ house for dinner. After 51 consecutive Thanksgivings worth of eating a ton of food like some sort of ravenous, rabid, feasting animal, I am barely going to eat anything and I am very happy about that. Weight loss surgery has changed my life and Thanksgiving dinner is a minor casualty of that change, but it is so worth it. Soooo worth it.

Okay. I have watched the first ever episode of Pennyworth and a couple of film camera videos on youtube. Breakfast is done and so is my procrastination time. Let’s get this turkey day rolling, shall we!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! (You too, Canada… even if you do celebrate Thanksgiving in the wrong month. I can’t stay mad at you guys. I love you guys)