Tag: weight

Body Image Thoughts

This is going to be a gastric bypass surgery post. If you don’t want to read about how fat I was, then now is the time to bail out. I promise I won’t be mad. Hell, I’m tired of thinking about how fat I was.

Okay. Still here?

It’s been 2.5 years since I had the surgery. I’m still down something like 210-220 pounds over that time. I still think the whole experience has been nothing short of miraculous.

But…

Over the last couple of weeks I have been having moments of confusion. I walk past a glass door and see my reflection and I feel totally weirded out. That’s not me that I see reflected in the glass. I am a 450 pound behemoth, not this miniaturized freak I see in the glass.

I look down at the floor in front of me and I see my shoes looking back up at me. That’s not me. If it were me I would see my gut protruding out so far that it completely blocks my view of my feet. Shoes? What shoes?

I look at myself in the mirror and see this weird, alien face with loose skin hanging off his neck staring back at him. I don’t see me. I don’t see the fat face with the skin stretched smooth over the cheeks that are so puffed up I look like Dizzy Gillespie wailing over some Bb dominant 7 chord.

What the hell, Robert? It’s been 2.5 years. You have looked like this for a long time now. Surgery was 2.5 years ago, but you hit the 200 pound lost point over 1.5 years ago. Why aren’t you used to being this new you yet? What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you accept the new reality?

I don’t know. I had over 30 years of being a grossly overweight adult. I had just a few years of being 400+ pounds, but that seems to have been long enough to make it permanent in my tiny little brain. I think the real question here is, why now? It’s been a long time since I felt like the rug was being pulled out from under me when I saw my reflection. It’s been a long time since I held up the clothes that I am wearing now to those that I wore before the surgery. Why am I weirded out now when I wasn’t a month or two ago?

Is it a holidays thing? Does the upcoming Thanksgiving dinner feast and the knowledge that I won’t be able to participate like I used to somehow trigger some weird body image thing? Is that going to happen every year? Am I somehow, perversely nostalgic for the time when I was so heavy that I couldn’t go for a 100 yard walk without feeling like my heart and my lungs were going to literally explode in my chest? That better not be the case because that sort of thing was so soul crushing that part of me just wanted to die to get it over with. No way am I thinking back fondly to that. At least not consciously. But sub-consciously? Maybe? Damn, I hope not.

What is it about November 2024 that has me in such a weird body image frame of mind? I don’t get it. Maybe I should walk past glass doors and see myself reflected back more often so that I just get over it and get used to the new normal. The new normal is better in every single way. 99.999% of the time I feel that and I literally rejoice in it (seriously), but those other weird surprise moments… that 0.001% of the time… it’s like dude, what the hell is wrong with you?

Which Me is Real?

My sister in law started a shared Google Photo Album where we can all add pictures of my father. One of my brother’s friends is going to make a slide show out of them that we will have running at the wake on Thursday.

I was looking through the album and I had a weird moment where my memory and reality sort of broke apart from each other. There was a picture of me from a couple of years before I had my weight loss surgery. I wasn’t even close to the 450 pounds I weighed when I finally decided to go under the knife, but I was probably 380 pounds or so. I was huge, though not quite as huge as I would eventually get.

Seeing that picture didn’t phase me in the least. I kept scrolling through the album and I eventually got to a photo from earlier this year. Father’s Day, to be precise. There was a picture of my father with my brother, my sister, and some other guy. I did a double take. The other guy was me. I didn’t recognize myself. It was the same me that I see in the morning now. It was post-surgery, 215-220 pound me. The current me. The new normal, real me. I didn’t recognize me.

I did recognize the dangerously overweight me as if it were the “real” me.

That didn’t bother me quite as much as being asked about my mother while talking about my father’s funeral did (as mentioned in a post from earlier today), but it disturbed me a bit.

Like… who am I? Who is the “real” me? Do I even know? Will I ever know?

Month 23 Weigh In

Robert, if you’re not weighing in monthly anymore, why did you bother doing it on the 23rd monthiversary rather than waiting 30 days and doing it on the two year anniversary? I don’t know, leave me alone.

I walked past the scale yesterday and without thinking about it stepped on it. I was expecting to be around 220 pounds. I was less than that. It pleased me. It made me want to step on the scale today, which is the one year and 11 month mark since my gastric bypass surgery. It made me want to update my weight loss spreadsheet for the first time since January 9, 2024 (which was the two year anniversary of the first appointment at the weight loss clinic). So feeling thusly inspired (is thusly a word?), I stepped on the scale this morning… and I was down from yesterday. I was also down from January 9, 2024. Nice.

The last weigh in, almost three months ago, had me at 213.20 pounds. Today’s weigh in has me at 211.60. I am down 1.6 pounds over the last three months. That pleases me a lot. I thought I would be way up. I’ve actually had to start using a looser notch on my belt. I thought I was putting the weight back on, slowly but surely. Nope. 1.6 pounds over three months, I would say that I am officially maintaining. I’m up 13.2 pounds since I hit my low point, which was while I had Covid. I’d love to be below 200 pounds again, but I am more than happy to be at 211.6. It’s an indescribable improvement over weighing more than 430 pounds the way I did back in April of 2022.

Here are the totals over the last two years or so. I have lost 219.8 pounds since the last weigh in before the surgery. I told my father yesterday that I was at 220. Close enough. I am down 240.4 since the first weigh in. My BMI was 55 on that fateful first weigh in day back in January 2022. Today it is 25.8. That is technically still considered overweight, but given the circumstances, I freakin’ love it.

So there we have it. The current state of the weight loss journey. I plan to weigh in again on the second anniversary of the surgery. That will be May 4, 2024. After that… I might not weigh in again for another year. This was never about the numbers for me. It was always about the way I feel. That and being able to be there for my family, when prior to the surgery I had reached a point where I couldn’t function under normal circumstances. In those terms, this is the most successful healthcare experience of my life. The numbers are fun for the stats geek that I am at heart. For that reason, I’ll keep that weight loss tracking spreadsheet around.

Happy 23 months, everyone.

The Do-Not-Eat List

At most of my weight loss clinic check ins, they ask me if I’ve found any foods that I cannot tolerate. There generally hasn’t been anything other than sugar, and I have never tested eating sugar, I just know that I can’t eat it without getting sick.

My answer to that question is that there are things I’ve had trouble with, but I can usually pin the trouble down on something I did (ate too fast, ate too much, didn’t chew enough) that caused the problem rather than the actual food itself.

There was one item that I was unsure of though. Quinoa. I freakin’ love me some quinoa, but most if not all of the few times I’ve had it in the 1.5 years since the surgery have resulted in nausea and problems with my redesigned stomach. I still wasn’t sure if it was the food or something I did.

Tonight we had quinoa. I only had a couple of little fork-fulls. It didn’t go well. Damn it. I think I officially have one food on the do-not-eat list. There is one food that I think I am unable to tolerate. Quinoa. Shit.

Oh well. We live and we learn and we move on to the next challenge.

Onederland

Now I am not by any stretch trying to say that there is an upside to having Covid-19. Absolutely not. There is no upside.

However… I stepped on the scale again this morning and I am below 200 pounds.

QUEUE THE MARCHING BAND, BABIE! I HAVE REACHED THE MYTHICAL ONEDERLAND! MY WEIGHT IS BELOW 200 POUNDS FOR THE FIRST TIME IN (I think) MY ADULT LIFE! HOLY CRAP ON A STICK! I WEIGH LESS THAN 200 POUNDS! ONEDERLAND, BABIE! ONEDERLAND!

Now, having said all of that. I do expect that within a few days of beating Covid and having my body chemistry go back to normal, I will top 200 pounds again. I think my body has pretty clearly declared that it wants me somewhere between 205 and 215. I am not going to worry about that today. I am also not going to worry about the possibility of a sub-200 weight actually being too low for me to be healthy. I don’t think that’s the case, but it’s low enough that I should think about it as maybe being a thing.

No. Today we’re just going to let the marching band parade up and down the street in front of my house as a massive celebration of hitting a seemingly unattainable weight loss goal that only required me to gut myself, rewire my innards, and then catch the 21st century’s plague to achieve.

Welcome to Onederland, boys and girls. Enjoy the view!

Bonus Weigh In

The last time I wrote about stepping on the scale I said I was going to do this, but I was 90% kidding… and then I did it. I guess 10% serious was enough.

The last time I weighed myself and lost weight was the monthly check in on March 4th. I was down to 216 pounds even. The next two Wednesday weigh ins I was up. First one pound, then 1.4 pounds. I was not bothered by that. It was expected and not a big deal. The thing I was kidding about was that I would step on the scale every day and when (if?) I ever went below 216 I would mark it on my spreadsheet. Ha ha ha, right?

I think I weighed myself on Thursday. I don’t think I did it on Friday. I honestly can’t remember if I did it yesterday, Saturday, or not. This morning I did it and I was down to 215.6. Heh heh. The spreadsheet and the Health app on my iPhone have been updated. I’m down 2.8 since Wednesday, which probably means the scale was inaccurate somehow. I don’t care. My BMI is 26.2, my weight loss since surgery is 215.8 which means I have lost more weight since May 4, 2022 than I actually weigh, and my total since the first weigh in is 236.4.

And all was right with the world.

Week 45 Weigh In

I’m a day late for my Wednesday weigh in post. Do you think there’s a reason for that? Do ya? Betcha do.

Yeah, for the second week in a row I am up. Up 1.4 pounds to be exact. That means over the last two weeks I am up 2.4 pounds. Yeah, that sucks, but it’s also not a big deal. I knew it was coming. My weigh in yesterday was 218.4. I still love that number.

I weighed myself when I got up this morning and I was down from yesterday. I weighed myself again after finishing my workout and my morning constitutional (TMI) and I was down a little more. Two weeks ago I was at 216. Maybe I’ll check on it every day until I drop below 216 and update the spreadsheet then… because I am a content whore and I’m obsessed with watching the graphs I made on my spreadsheet trend down. You know how it is.

Yesterday was a bad day for feeling healthy as well. My lunch didn’t sit well, my shoveling from Tuesday night left my back and my neck and my shoulders and my arms in a ton of pain. To make matters worse, my Wednesday morning jog (yog) was 56 minutes long because I wanted my move (calorie) goal complete before I left for the office. All of that combined messed me up big time. To make matters worse, my dinner set my nausea off and it didn’t let up until just before I fell asleep. That means I didn’t have anything to eat last night after about 7:30 or so, and my empty stomach was hurting in a big way when I woke up. I’ve had breakfast and some water since then and I feel better, but my body is still sore and unhappy and I am expecting today to be a pretty crappy day.

Here’s hoping I’m wrong, and here’s hoping the scale stops going up. Am I right?

Week 42 Weigh In

It’s Wednesday and Wednesday is Weigh In Day. My gastric bypass surgery happened 42 weeks ago today. What’s the latest news? We’ll, I’ll tell ya.

It feels like things might be leveling off. I am still down this week, but for the second week in a row the loss isn’t that different than what I was seeing years ago when I was on Weight Watchers, or WW as it’s now known. About a pound a week. In the old days the hope was half a pound each week. Last week I was down 1.8 pounds. This week it’s 1.4. So better than the WW days, but not that much better. I have mentioned a few times this week that I have been eating a lot more since my mother went into the hospital at the end of January. I am trying to cut back a little but results have been slightly less than successful.

So I am down 1.4 pounds. I haven’t broken 220, but I am right on the edge. The scale read 220.6 this morning. So close. Hopefully next week that 10’s column will flip. There were milestones elsewhere though. My BMI went from 27 to 26.8, inching closer to the magical 25. My weight lost since the surgery flipped the 10’s column and hit 210.8. The total weight lost since the first weigh in flipped the 10’s column last week and now stands at 231.4. I suspect it will be a while before I flip the 10’s columns on the totals again. We’ll see. I have an appointment with my surgeon next week so I will be sure to ask what comes next as far as leveling off is concerned.

So that’s the latest on the weight loss front. Now I just have to get my ass in gear on the RPM Challenge stuff. So much to do and almost no time left to do it. This weekend needs to be uber productive. Fingers crossed.

Week 41 Weigh In

I am pleasantly surprised and rather pleased. I mentioned before that I have been eating a lot more than usual. I’ve been eating things that aren’t necessarily good for me too. I’ve been handling it all okay for the most part, though the couple of ounces of peanuts I tried to eat last night gave me the worst bought of nausea I’ve experienced since the start of this whole thing.

I expected minimal weight loss at best, and realistically with all the stress eating and difficulties of the last week I expected to gain a little weight. I did not. I lost 1.8 pounds, which under the circumstances feels like a ton. I now weight 222 even. My BMI dropped 0.2 points to 27 even. I’m inching closer to that mythical, magical 25 mark. My weight loss since the surgery is now at 209.4, and my weight loss since the first check in moved the 10’s column and reached 230.4.

At the wake Monday night I lost track of the number of times someone came through the receiving line and didn’t recognize me. While it was life affirming every single time, I also got a little tired of it. I get it, I am thinner. Can we focus on the topic at hand please? I don’t know. I felt guilty about feeling good about my health while my mother was 10 feet away in a casket.

On an unrelated note, I am watching the last few minutes of The Mandalorian season two, episode six. I just watched Boba Fett kick the crap out of a drop ship full of stormtroopers. If only the Book of Boba Fett season had followed suit. Oh well. I think I am going to include that show in my Mandalorian pre-season three prep binge anyway. It was good, it just wasn’t great. Except for the episodes with Mando and Baby Yoda, of course. Those episodes were stellar.

On another unrelated note, I took today off to recover from the wake and the funeral. It might be the best move I’ve ever made, career wise. I need a decompression day. Jen is working though so I am not going to play guitar through an amp all day. I am going to play guitar through an amp sim though. I have eight songs to put rhythm guitars on before I sleep tonight. I will get The RPM Challenge on track today, even if it kills me.

One Year (Sort Of) Weigh In

One year ago today I went to the weight loss clinic for the first time. I didn’t have a doctor’s appointment, I was just there to have some vitals taken. One of those vitals was my weight. That became my starting point for this whole crazy journey thing.

While that was one year ago today, I don’t really feel like it’s the appropriate date to use for the anniversary. I think the day I should really be using is May 4th, which is the day I actually went under the knife. I lost 20 pounds or so in the three plus months between that first check in and the surgery, and those 20 pounds are really important to me, but the point of all of this was the surgery and those three plus months and 20 pounds aren’t actually part of the surgery experience, you know what I mean? It’s all semantics, but little details like that are often important to my teeny tiny little brain.

So today is AN anniversary, but not really THE anniversary. It’s worthy of a bonus weigh in though. It also demonstrates why weighing in too often can lead to insanity. Yesterday was my regular weekly weigh in. I was down 2.4 pounds and that was lovely. I had a bad day food wise for the entire day so I didn’t eat much and I did stress a lot and I did manage to hit my exercise goals and all of that stuff. The result was that my weight is down 1.4 pounds since yesterday. 1.4 pounds in 24 hours. That’s ridiculous, right? I’ll probably have a perfectly normal day today and be up two pounds tomorrow. Fortunately I won’t be weighing in tomorrow.

BMI is down to 28.6 from yesterday’s 28.8. Total since surgery is now 196.4. I can practically taste 200. Given the date today, the important number for this post is the total weight loss over the last 365 days and it is a colossal 217 pounds on the nose. I know I’ve been the guy who actually lived through this first year of this… thing… but it is still almost impossible for me to wrap my brain around it. One year ago today I weighed 452 pounds and everything I did, every step, every breath, felt like it was going to be my last. Today I weigh 235 pounds and I literally feel alive again.

Who even am I?

Happy sort of Anniversary!