Tag: health

I Lied to Myself

I told myself that I wasn’t going to weigh in today. I told myself that as I was turning on the scale. I told myself that as I was stepping onto the scale. I told myself that as I was standing there in awe of how much weight I’ve lost since Wednesday.

7.6 pounds in five days. How am I still even alive? My 10’s column changed again. I am up to 88 pounds lost since the surgery and 108.6 since the first appointment. My BMI dropped 0.9 points since Wednesday too.

Hoe

Lee

Shit.

If I can lose 3.5 pounds in the next two days my 10’s column will change again.

Birthday Cake Blues

I shared a picture of Bellana’s birthday cake yesterday. I bought it at the supermarket a couple of days ago. It’s huge and chocolate and it looks delicious and wonderful and I can’t have any. Well, if I wanted to trigger a round of dumping syndrome I could have some, but I absolutely do not want that to happen so I won’t be having any.

I really want some. Not in the same way that I used to want cake prior to the Gastric Bypass surgery. Back then I would have drooled for a while as I fought the urge to eat half of the cake in one bite and then I would eat half of the cake in one bite. Now I just look at it longingly and then forget it’s there for a while. The next time I find myself in the kitchen I’ll go through it all again.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… this is a weird new universe we’re living in.

Faux 5K

Yesterday I said I was thinking of upping my faux indoor walk game and shooting for a 5k simulated distance instead of just a 30 minute time. Welp, today that’s what I did. It took about 44 minutes to go 3.2 miles. Just about what I was expecting. My legs are beat. Not quite numb, but really tired. I’ll still try to do 15 minutes on the bike later if I can. I won’t stress if I can’t though.

Bellana made it to Germany while we were sleeping last night. Her flight home from there is still showing as on time. It should leave in about an hour. Every finger I have is crossed with every other finger I have in the hopes that she takes off and lands on time. Jen and I are going to the airport to pick her up. I don’t want to have to wait any longer. I want her home!

So television shows. I have started watching season four of Westworld on HBO Max. I’m a few weeks behind, but I’ll catch up. The funny thing here is, I’ve been trying to watch an episode a night while sitting up in bed. I’ve tried twice, and both times I have managed to fall asleep just before the episode ends. Nice, Robert. What are you, some kind of rookie? I started over this morning to make sure I didn’t actually miss anything. With this show, you sort of have to pay a lot of attention. The tiniest detail in episode two can turn out to be the thing the whole series hinges on, you know?

Okay. Going to make myself some scrambled eggs and then punch in to work. Bellana comes home today!

43 Days

Earlier I mentioned that I was in the middle of a streak of doing a 30 minute walk-in-place thing a day, but I didn’t know how many days the streak had been running.

I went back and looked it up. June 1, 2022 was the first day. That was 43 days ago.

I also looked up what the longest single walk-in-place thing I’d done was. It was Thanksgiving 2020 and I did a make-pretend 5k walk. My exercise app has it on file as a 3.2 mile indoor walk. 5k is more like 3.10686 miles, but I think I rounded up to make sure I hit the goal.

I wonder… instead of doing a 30 minute walk each morning… should I do an approximate 5k? I would have to get started earlier in the morning than I do now. I bet I could do it. Thanksgiving 2020, I was pretty sure I was going to die. Today? I bet I could do it.

Maybe tomorrow.

The goal with all the walking of course is our planned trip to Disney World in January. I want to be able to walk from one end of Orlando to the other without getting too desperately tired. The more walking I do in preparation, the easier that trip will be.

I’m Pretty Sore Today

Yesterday was a tough one physically mostly, but also mentally.

I am not going into a lot of detail here, but the back story is this. Last September my parents moved from their house in Tewksbury to an assisted living space in Billerica. Over the course of the next eight months my mother’s dementia grew steadily worse to the point where she was getting up in the middle of the night and falling down. On May 9th she had a fall and was taken to Lowell General Hospital. The assisted living space said they could no longer handle assisting her living so the hospital started working toward finding a new place for her. She was moved into a nursing facility in Andover and she’s living there now. That means that my parents, who are days away from their 55th wedding anniversary, are no longer able to live together. It’s crushing to say the least. My father was still in the same room at the assisted living place, but that room was in the memory care unit, which he does not require. So yesterday we moved him to a new room, one that is not in the locked down memory unit.

We had movers pick up a piece of furniture at the house in Tewksbury and take it to Billerica. They then moved everything from the memory wing in the basement to Dad’s new room on the first floor, then they took some of mom’s things back to Tewksbury. I bounced from place to place with them and helped out a little. Mostly just by punching in the door lock codes getting in and out of the memory wing.

After the movers were done (huge, huge thanks to them) I went back to Dad’s new room and helped unpack. My sister and my two nephews were there too. We had everything wrapped up by about 2:00 with one glaring exception. Dad sleeps on a rented hospital bed. The company that rents the bed handles moving it from place to place. They initially said they would be there to move the bed at 2:09. Then 2:48. Then 3:30. I had to leave before they got there. I’ll tell you why right now.

We had broken for lunch at around noon. Dad went to the cafe, My sister and the kids went to Wendy’s, and I stayed in the room waiting for maintenance to fix something in the bathroom and switch on the Cable TV. I started eating my little four ounce of chicken lunch but kept getting interrupted. In the end it took me about two hours to get through it and I spent a lot of time taking a bite, then unpacking something for a few minutes, then going back for another bite. I don’t know if my bites were too big, or if it was something to do with being active mid-meal, but I found myself getting pretty nauseous. I pushed through it, but I was feeling pretty bad.

Later, during the time we were done with everything but the waiting for the bed I started feeling sicker. I think it was due to lack of protein? Maybe? Lack of food? Something? I only had a protein shake for breakfast so I hadn’t eaten much. I was just feeling sick to my stomach again and weak and I was getting on toward being nervous about driving. I had to leave and go get something to eat. Once I was home with food in me I felt better. I feel bad about bailing, but at least now I have another couple of food experiences to keep an eye on.

So stomach wise, things are good today. Thankfully. Dad wise, he’s in his new place. He’s miserable about being separated from Mom, but otherwise he seemed okay yesterday. It’s possible he was just putting on a brave face for two of his kids and two of his grandkids, but he did seem okay. Here’s hoping he still feels okay today.

The hang up for me, personally, at this point is pain. I more or less was on my feet yesterday from 7:00am to 3:00pm. It was rough for Mr. Out of Shape here. Sure, I have a lot more energy and stuff since losing 100 pounds in the last seven months (WOOHOO!), but I am still really fat and out of shape and that was a lot of work yesterday.

Then to make things work, I still did my 30 minutes of walking. It was after dinner when I was all settled and feeling better. Jen and I were in the living room watching the tube and I got up and started walking. My Activity App credited me for 18 minutes of exercise during the day, but I have a streak of doing 30 minute walks going (I don’t actually remember when the streak started so I can’t tell you how long it’s lasted) and I didn’t want to ruin it. So I started walking. 30 minutes later I was a mess, but happy. Today I got up as usual and did another 30 minutes before work and now my legs are going to fall off. Poof, no legs. Figuratively at least.

Here’s hoping the pain lessens as the day goes on, but we will have to see.

Ouch, babie. Ouch.

Weigh In

Happy 10 weeks since surgery day! How are we feeling, good? Are we excited for today’s weigh in? I sure am!

I lost 3.8 pounds in the last week. That’s down quite a bit from the pace I had been on over the last month, but it’s still triumphant. I was kinda hoping I’d get to 4.9 as that would change the 10’s column in my total weight, but I’ll take this and I’ll tell you why…

My weight loss since the surgery date has flipped into the 80’s. Barely. I have lost 80.4 pounds since the last pre-surgery weigh in. Amazing.

Even better, my weight loss since the first check in has increased to triple digits, babie! I am in the hundreds and it feels amazing! 101 pounds, to be exact. I can’t freakin’ believe it! Amazing!

The only thing that even hints of a negative here is that my weight is so close to dropping in the 10’s column that I am probably not going to be able to stop myself from stepping on the scale before next Wednesday. I know that sounds silly and all, but I’m trying to be disciplined here and I can see a small failure in my future… probably Friday or Saturday. We’ll see.

Happy 100 pound day! WOOHOOO!!!

Sleep Deprived

I have to be at my childhood house in Tewksbury by 7:30 tomorrow. Movers are coming to get a few things and someone (me) needs to be there to let them in.

I need to wake up at a ridiculous hour. Why oh why then am I still awake? What’s wrong with me?

Go to sleep!

Oh yeah, tomorrow is weigh in day. I’ll need to get up early enough to step on the scale, update the iPhone Health app, then update my spreadsheet. Nerd alert!

Where’s My Film?

Hey CVS… 13 days… where’s my roll of film, bro?

I posted on an analog photography Reddit forum the other day asking for suggestions for film labs that operate online. Meaning, I ship my film to them, they develop it and send me scans of the images, or send scans and ship back prints (if I pay a little extra).

I book marked a few sites and made accounts at some of them. One had a page dedicated to expired film. There 30+ year old example was super dark. That’s what I expect the first of the two rolls at CVS to look like. My zeroth roll, if you will. The second roll and all that follow should be okay. I don’t really care about that. I just want to see some results. I want to know that the camera and the light meter and all of the stuff work.

I also spent some time recently looking for camera clubs to join. There’s one based in Andover that would be fun to check out but they are shut down for the summer. Thanks a bunch. There are some others in the general Eastern Massachusetts area, but they are kinda far away. Oh well.

My last research topic was free online photography classes. I found one through the Harvard Extension School! Awesome! I tried to sign up for it but when I clicked the “start class” button the link was broken. Sonofabitch! I’ll try again later. No biggie.

Unrelated note: Dinner tonight was 4.2 ounces of deli roast beef. It was delicious. When I was done I set a timer for one hour so that I could know when I would be clear to drink water again. 40 minutes later I changed my mind and went looking for a couple of ounces of grapes. I ended up with 2.5 ounces. Want to know how much that is in practical terms? It was 11 grapes. My dessert tonight is 11 grapes. This is a pretty goofy looking new world, ain’t it?