Tag: weight loss

Clothes

I need new clothes. I’m nearly at the point where I can’t deal with it anymore.

I like loose fitting clothes. When you’re might height your clothes shopping options dwindle greatly. When you’re my weight too, they pretty much vanish. I wear what I can get my hands on. That’s it.

Today though, I am wearing clothes that I bought 80+ pounds ago. Everything I own is super baggy now. I really don’t mind with t-shirts and collared shirts except that the neck opening sometimes hangs down low enough that it feels like a v-neck. Jeans… well… Ever seen a movie from the 50’s with a hobbo character? That’s how I feel. I am starting to feel like I look like a clown.

Jen and I are planning to do some clothes shopping this weekend. I usually buy online, but I don’t really know what size I need now. I am going to have to spend some quality fitting room time. I’m actually stressing out about this a little. Why?

I’ve been using a selfie a day app and taking a picture of myself in the mirror every morning. I don’t see a lot of difference in my appearance. I wonder if that’s because the clothes are the same size in all of the pics. If I wear smaller clothes will I then look thinner? I don’t know. I don’t care. Well, maybe I do care.

Wednesday is my weigh in day. I woke up this morning needing to step on the scale. I mean I needed to. I didn’t. I fought the urge to break the routine. I don’t know if I will be able to do the same tomorrow (Tuesday) but I will do my best. Once a week is good. Once every two weeks would be better. Once a month would be best. I just don’t want to get caught up in the numbers game, but at the same time I feel like this whole post-surgery experience is difficult enough that I should be celebrating every single ounce I lose. I don’t know.

Weigh in the day after tomorrow. Clothes shopping three days later. Such a crazy, weird new world, huh?

No Pain, No Gain, Something Something

I walked/marched in place for 30 minutes this morning before work. At lunch time I rode the exercise bike for 15 minutes. I have been trying to work the bike into my daily routine for a couple of weeks. Hopefully things will work out in such a way that I can do this regularly.

The downside is that my legs feel like rubber and walking is a little bit of an adventure. Yikes.

Here comes some camera nerd thoughts. Ready? Okay, I installed a light meter app on my phone yesterday. Dad’s camera has a built in light meter and I would utterly be toast without it. I assume my Nikon has one built in too, but I don’t know where it is or how to use it (now that I think of it, it’s probably just the auto mode). At lunch today I tested it out a smidge. I picked something to shoot, used the light meter, used manual mode on the Nikon, set everything the way the meter told me to, and took a picture. It looked okay on the D90’s little view screen. I then turned off half of the lights in the cellar and did it again. The picture looked okay but it was a little on the dark side (insert Vader’s breathing here).

I then repeated the entire process with the Pentax. The internal light meter looked good in both cases, so I think the app is probably close to accurate. How will the pictures look when I get them developed? I haven’t a freakin’ clue. Not even a tiny inkling of an idea. It may be a long time before I get the results. I took the roll that was in the camera (the 35ish year old roll that Dad started and I finished) to CVS on Saturday. They said 7-10 days… so I should be getting a call from them any minute now. (For those of you reading this post at some random future date, it hasn’t even been 48 hours yet. I was kidding. Get it?)

What else? Do I need to get a camera bag for Dad’s camera, or do I need to rearrange the bag that I have so that it can hold both cameras? My bag has the D90, two lenses, and some other little things. I can change the size of each section in the bag so I know I can fit the camera in there somehow, I just won’t be able to fit all of the other stuff. I have three lenses for the D90, including one that would be on the camera, and two for the K1000, again including one that’s actually on the camera. I may have to leave the extra lenses at home when I take the bag out somewhere. Maybe I get a bag for the two cameras and another bag for the lenses? Do amateur goofballs do that?

I also saw some youtube videos showing a couple of accessories that have kicked off my camera gear acquisition syndrome. Amazon has a remote shutter that screws on to the actual shutter switch. I could use the shit out of that for long exposures. I also saw a timer that is a little windup clock thing that also screws onto the shutter. I think K1000s might have come with that at some point. I wonder if Dad had one. I can’t find any of those anywhere online, including ebay.

And that, dear friends and neighbors, is my lunch break post for today.

Not Ready for Monday

I am just not ready for this… Monday. Crud.

I’m on track today. I started work before starting breakfast, which I don’t like, but otherwise all is well. My day’s exercise is done, the laundry is running and the bed is made and things are looking good. I just want another day for the weekend, that’s all.

I only got four hours of sleep Saturday night, thanks to the sunrise chasing. Last night I got seven hours but the numbers were as good as I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if that’s enough though because I am pretty seriously sleepy right now.

I stayed up later than I should have last night because I was being a camera nerd. Well… a camera researching nerd. Is that a thing? I was on youtube watching videos of common film photography mistakes, and tips and tricks for film photography beginners, and videos of people taking their Pentax K1000 on street photography photo walks around various places. I’ve done that a couple of times in Boston and New York. Well… usually I was doing something else and just took my camera with me and pretended I was on a photo walk.

I want to do it again with Dad’s camera now. Like… lets do it now! I need to get some fast film so I can do it at night too (assuming I don’t screw up loading the film again). I want to start at the old Tower Records location and just walk down Newbury Street to the Common, and then walk through the theater district, and then go back up to the building formerly known as the Hancock building and the church next door, and then go to the North End and go through the farmers market, and then, and then, and then. Man, I friggin’ love Boston. Screw Covid for keeping us away.

Oh, and then we need to go to New York, and then we need to go back up to the mountains and find waterfalls. All of it.

Also, if I don’t play my guitar soon I am going to die. Just saying. Thursday is the day I have pegged for trying to trade in my Strat. If they give me cash I will use that cash for the upgrades to the two 1970’s Gibsons.

Okay. Time to take on Monday. Mondays suck. I wanna go to Boston and wander around instead. Unless it starts raining… and it’s supposed to rain. Crud.

Surprised Myself

Hello and welcome to the seventh weekiversary of my weight loss surgery. It’s Wednesday and that means it’s weigh in day.

I stepped on the scale today, hoping for a 2-3 pound drop and fantasizing about a 4-5 pound drop, but not thinking that was in the realm of possibility. In Weight Watchers terms (That’s WW now) an average of 0.5 pounds per week is considered spot on perfect. I have been eating more this week than before, and I have snuck in after dinner snacks a few times. The progress should be slowing as a result.

I was down 7.2 pounds. Holy shit snacks. Seven pounds? I am a couple of hours removed from actually stepping on the scale at this point and I’m already wondering if the scale was wrong, or did I read it wrong (I absolutely did not), or if I step on it again would it be significantly different?

I have a spreadsheet that I use to track my weekly weigh ins. It has a column for week to week change, and two fields for total. One total is the weight loss since the last pre-surgery weigh in and the other is the total since the first weigh in. They are 64 and 84 pounds. I say again, holy shit snacks. I also added a column for BMI today. My BMI has dropped 10.3 points since the first weigh in.

Faint.

Ouchie

30 minutes of marching in place this morning.

10 minutes on the exercise bike during my lunch break. I probably could have kept it going a little longer, but I ran out of time.

The two things combined, along with going up and down the cellar stairs a number of times throughout the day, equal… ouch.

Maybe we’ll do 15 minutes on the bike tomorrow? We’ll see.

Five Weeks

Today marks five weeks since the surgery. That makes it weigh in day.

I have lost 52 pounds. 52 pounds in five weeks.

I can’t believe it. It hardly seems real.

It is real though… I’ve reached the point where my clothes don’t fit anymore.

Wednesday is Weigh in Day

I am really going to try and stop myself from stepping on the scale more than once a week. The surgery was on a Wednesday so I decided that Wednesday is the day, and today is Wednesday.

The pace of the weight loss is slowing down, which makes sense given that I’m eating actual food now. The number is still really good though. Down another 3.8, which puts me at 46.2 since the Friday before the surgery.

I’m stunned and pleased and overall just happy with the whole thing so far. And I’ve only gotten sick once.

Four weeks down, the rest of my life to go.

Two Weeks

Two weeks ago at about this time, I think I was being moved from the operating room to the recovery room. I’m trying to find some way to commemorate this historic anniversary and I am coming up with nothing. I’m in the cellar, watching Breaking Bad again and surfing online music stores on my laptop. I don’t want to spend money on gitter stuff but what can you do? Pedal boards and random gear are just fun to daydream about. I have made sure to avoid looking at actual guitars though. Amps too. Just pedals and non-bank breaking stuff.

As for the post-surgical update, I had a weird experience today. I ate my delicious tuna fish puree at lunch time. When I was done I… well… it’s so odd… I felt… hungry. As in, damn I could go for another ounce of that fun stuff. It was just a weird feeling.

I am still not giving any details on the subject, but my mother is still in the hospital. I still can’t do anything about it, and likely won’t be able to for another 2-3 weeks. I feel less than useless. Again, no details are coming but I just needed to state that publicly for my own guilt ridden reasons. That is all.

Happy two-week birthday to my little baby stomach*.

* In his book Ghost Rider, Neil Peart, while dealing with the deaths of his wife and daughter, refers to parts of his recovery as feeding his little baby soul. My soul is okay, but my little baby stomach needs constant attention.

Spoke a Little Too Soon

Okay, so when I wrote a post about being on the stage II diet, I posted a smidge too soon. Tomorrow. Or Thursday. Tonight we’re still liquid.

My first appointment today was the stage II diet class. I will be able to eat small amounts of food, but only if they are pureed down to the consistency of applesauce. On the one hand, gross. On the other hand, kick ass. It’s a Strange New World.

My second appointment was a post-surgical follow up with the nurse practitioner. There were two main topics of discussion. One was, you’re doing everything right. The other was, let’s try to get rid of all of this light headedness. We’re going to try a combination of keep doing what I’m doing, add an extra protein shake if I can hack it, and stop taking one of the meds. I can do that.

I weighed in today for the first time since before the surgery. I have a spreadsheet keeping track of my weight throughout this whole process, but I just scrapped it. It was a combination of my bathroom scale and the scale at the clinic. I have decided to just go with the clinic scale for now and to keep that as the official count. I can do a separate sheet for the home scale.

I want to share the weight loss numbers with the universe, but I don’t want to share the actual weight. I will try to do that with algebra. Hold on to your butts.

My first visit to the clinic was on January 19, 2022. That visit consisted entirely of checking my vital signs, including my weight. On that day my weight was calculated at x.

I’m sure I stood on the scale a few times in subsequent visits but I didn’t write those official numbers down until the day of the stage I diet class, April 29, 2022. On that day my weight was calculated at y=x-20.6. That was a couple of pounds higher than my pre-surgery goal, but it was good enough to proceed. I weighed in again today at the stage II class and the new number is z=y-22.4=x-43.0. Down a little more than 22 since the Friday before the surgery and down 43 since the first weigh in.

The question then is, which number is the accurate/official one? When I think of how much I’ve lost, should it be since the surgery, which is approximately 22.4 pounds, or should it be from the start of the process, which is 43? I don’t know. I also don’t really care.

One Week and One Day

Okay. The weight loss surgery date is one week from tomorrow. It’s hitting me. Or at least it’s starting to, and it’s coming from directions I did not expect.

I’m putting together notes for co-workers so they can cover some of my regular responsibilities while I’m out for a whole month. The result is feelings of guilt. Big time feelings of guilt. Not the soul destroying guilt I was buried under a year ago when things were going really bad at my parents house, but a new, fresh, form of guilt.

Guilt over all of the things I won’t be able to do at home until after I recover. Guilt for the burden I am going to be on Jen and Harry and (eventually) Bellana. Even guilt over needing to finish the cellar before the surgery date and therefore putting the contractor into a position where he felt he needed to stay at our house working until 10:00 last night, and 9:30 one night last week.

I did not see this coming, but here it is.

Shit.