Okay, so I know it has been a while since I have last posted to my blog. I’m sorry to those who have been reading that I haven’t kept up as much as I would have liked to. Where has the time gone! Goodness it has gone by so quickly.

Well… a update, first off, of how things are going for me. Since I last posted (on January 18, 2009) I have lost about a little more than 16 lbs. The other day I was at the store with my husband and he, for what I think is probably the first time, actually told me to slow down. He couldn’t keep up with me. I have always been the one to tell him to slow down. LOL :O)

Thankfully I have not had any complications physically. What I do have a little trouble with, still, is getting in 64-plus ounces of fluid in a day. I have never been one that drank a lot of fluid in a day. I can do it, but there are just days where I am so busy that I don’t think about holding a cup in my hands and sipping, sipping, sipping away at it. I am now able to eat solids and honestly can eat just about anything – with certain exceptions of course. So far I am handling what is on my list of things that are allowed at this point fairly well. At one of the support groups I went to this month I talked to the nutritionist who told me that it is okay to eat the protein bars at this point. That made me VERY excited! I will eat a protein bar any day over drinking the protein shakes…. mainly because I am a little tired of drinking the protein shakes. I still like to get some ISOPURE in though. These extra protein supplements are now my choice to keep eating. The plan that those who go through St. Vincent Carmel Bariatric Center of Excellence get says that at 12 weeks out we can cut down the additional protein supplements. We are told to make sure we get in 3 servings of Milk every day. I am doing good with getting in 3 ounces of food at each meal now. Sometimes I can’t get it all in but that is mainly if I have eaten a protein bar within 2 hours of eating the regular meal. I also have noticed that in the morning when I go to eat breakfast, or even in the evening if I haven’t eaten anything for an extended time period between lunch and dinner, I get this little “hunger pain” feeling in my stomach. I discussed this with Dr. Gupta at my last check up appointment and she said that at this point I would be okay to drink hot tea or coffee prior to eating as they have found that with others who have had this same issue it helps to “warm up” the stomach muscles. The “hunger pains”, so to speak, don’t “hurt” necessarily but more so it is just annoying. When this happens I find that by the time I take my second bite out of my food I get almost a false fullness feeling. I know that my stomach isn’t full. It can hold more than two bites of food. The hot tea or coffee does help.

Clothing… I finally broke down and bought myself 3 new pair of pants over at the local Goodwill. If I have to get a new pair of pants I’ll get them from Goodwill until I am pretty well set at a plateau at my goal weight. One day I was at the YMCA and while walking on the treadmill I had to constantly pull up my sweat pants… that is when I decided to take that first step and figure out how many pant sizes I went down. Where am I on that? Well, (big grin) I bought pants 6 sizes down, but could have easily gotten them 8 sizes down. I chose the 6 sizes down over the 8 sizes down as I am so used to wearing my clothes slightly big. BUT… I also got 3 new shirts. 2 “large” t-shirts (one long sleeve one short to be layered one over the other) in regular ladies size and 1 “XL” shirt from the juniors! THAT was an exciting moment.

Another interesting thing I am starting to notice… There are a few who know me but didn’t recognize me at first glance! Ohhh the expressions are almost priceless. They just do this double take and then have this look of total shock on their face. A few have just looked at me with the thought written across their face of “is this seriously her”? LOL. I just chuckle. I have had a few ask what kind of diet I was on. A former co-worker asked me if I work out at the Y as she thought that she saw me but didn’t say anything because she wasn’t sure. All that with only being down 44 lbs. I am curious as to what it be like when I get down to my goal. :O)

So… for those of you just starting the process or who have just had their surgery… you will have this all start happening too. I’ve heard the stories of MANY others who have gone through this before me and it just seemed so surreal. But, it is true… people around you that know you do respond differently…. they are excited for you, they are surprised, they are curious, some don’t know how to respond (and do not realize that their confusion on how to respond is written all over their face). Be ready to have some humor and respond with something that will make them laugh. I told a former student that I had who looked totally confused as to why I had changed so quickly “it’s okay… I’m just shedding little pieces at a time of my ‘Big Mama’ costume”. I am secure within myself, and you have to be, to be able to admit that I was NOT at a healthy weight and instead of feeling bad about that… instead of being self-conscious… I prefer to use that condition that I was in as a stepping stone for better understanding. You can truly say that you understand when you have had to live it. This isn’t a surgery that can be taken lightly (as you have heard said many times) and you aren’t being given a free ride (as you may have also heard). You have to work the tool. You have to exercise, you have to take the vitamins and calcium every day for the rest of your life, you have to…. well… you should know… and if you need to know then check out the info on my blog site or many of the other sites out there that discuss it all.

Okay… now… I’m done with my own personal update. WOW… that was a long one. Sorry about that. Probably wouldn’t be so long if I would take the time to update more often. I’ll work on doing this better.

Two final thoughts… Product Review…
If you live in an area where there is a Kroger grocery store… go pick up some Kroger brand CARBmaster yogurt. It is 80 calories (which is less than other brands out there.. well.. that I have seen), has 3 Net Carbs and 12g Protein!!! I cannot get over this yogurt. It is just truly wonderful.

Kroger brand CARBmaster yogurt

Website to take a look at: http://www.livestrong.com
Take a stroll on this amazingly cool site that is brought to us by the Lance Amstrong organization. You can register for free and take part of some very cool features… like a food tracker that is better than any that I have yet found online, a inches lost measurement tracker, a weight loss tracker, exercise tracker, etc. Check out “The Daily Plate” section. I believe that you will be extremely pleased with this site as I know that I quickly am becoming.

Till next time…

~Tammy~

This morning I found myself on Livestrong.com. I was looking at Lance’s most recent doping testing. (Doping testing is that stated correctly?) Any who, I became mad reading the responses to this. Does every American blindly follow him? Come on people look to the mountain stages to see that this man was doping. Hmm, non-doping Lance dropped doping riders in almost every mountain stage…..I think not. Yes he is a great athlete, but that is just not plausible.

Look who uses fenders in the rain

While the fog has long since left Vancouver, I find myself in more of a hibernation mode with not much motivation to do anything. Perhaps it is from a lack of sun, as the grey winter days have left me wanting to cry my eyes out some days. But I also blame my intense laziness on my new obsession with the reimagined Battlestar Galactica (2004). I always come across things like this far after everyone else has discovered them, but I’ve not often been one to jump on the proverbial bandwagon when it comes to the newest crazes. However, if you haven’t yet seen this series (which happens to be in it’s last six episodes), I highly recommend borrowing Season One from a friend and tucking into a large bowl of popcorn.

Needless to say, my laziness has ended up in my gaining several more pounds on top of whatever I gained at Christmas. Perhaps some of you who also find yourselves with a bit of a muffin top or larger derriere might be interested in these links to help you on your way toward better health:

MapMyRun

Whatever your mode of self-propulsion, Map My Run is a great resource for tracking and planning running, walking, cycling, and hiking routes, with many other resources available for novices and pros alike. The site offers Google maps and topography maps that offer 3D and satellite map views of your routes.

The Daily Plate at Livestrong.com

This nutrition and fitness tracker is a goldmine of resources. The food diary will help you track your daily RDAs of fats, carbs, protein, etc., and will calculate for you how much of what you’ve eaten counts toward your RDAs. In addition, the food diary lets you set weight loss goals by recommending the amount of calories you should consume according to how many pounds you’d like to loose per week. The site includes an extensive database of foods to choose from and also offers a tool that lets you add your own food items if you happen not to find the item you’re looking for.

Nutrition Data

While this site has some small shortcomings (it’s database has no entries for whole or ground flax seeds, but somehow powdered spirulina has been included), it’s an outstanding reference for finding out the complete nutritional profiles of most whole foods. For each food item, the site offers a nutritional analysis page with a quick-view Nutritional Target Map, Caloric Ratio Pyramid, the Estimated Glycemic Load of the foodstuff, Nutrient Balance, Protein Quality (Amino Acid Score), and a very extensive nutritional breakdown of every vitamin, mineral, and type of fat, fatty acid, and carbohydrate. You can even save your search results. For instance, if you make a morning smoothie for breakfast, you can search for and save each of the ingredients according to the amount of each ingredient you’ve included in your smoothie.

My laziness of late has not meant I have been tinkering with ideas about recipes, local food, and ways of living green. Soon I will post a beautifully vegan rendition of a beef stew my mom used to make when I was a kid, as well as a DIY on how to make your own reusable produce bags. And because the buds on the trees outside seem to whisper to me “Spring is coming!”, I will soon be posting on my new adventures as an organic gardener. I will write about everything from building your own garden boxes and companion planting to vermicomposting and using a food dehydrator to preserve the literal fruits of your labours.

The start to our blog seems to have hit some major rough patches on its first day of inception. I was not aware that The Daily Plate (“TDP”) even had a weight loss progress bar for gold members until Lindsey told me about it. It seems incredibly cheesy to me for being a BENEFIT of paying $60 a year. They need to seriously rework that one.

I can’t even get the stupid bar to show the CORRECT goal weight on it! It seems to think I weigh 400 lbs and my goal weight is 200 lbs. I’ve tried changing it multiple times today on both TDP and Livestrong, with no success.

**Edit: Okay, so maybe I was reading it wrong and it’s not supposed to say your current weight or your goal weight, just the total number of pounds you want to lose. I still think it’s cheesy though.

We might have to rethink this progress bar nonsense and hope Lindsey can get a refund, especially for features that are still in beta and extremely buggy, yet they don’t disclose this factoid to their paying customers it seems. It seems to me there should be an easier way to stick a progress bar on a blog.

All that aside, I have been very happy with TDP, if you stick to their core features, namely tracking the foods you consume. It’s much simpler than writing it all down or trying to remember later what you had to eat this morning and how many calories it was. And being that I’m having a terrible time getting enough of some nutrients (more on that later), their feature for gold members to allow individual nutrient tracking is really nice, though I don’t think I would’ve paid that much for that feature alone.

Anyway, hopefully we get this figured out soon. At least our horoscope for today sounds promising.

“You intuitively know now that whatever you begin will be brought to fruition as a reward for your hard work. There’s much to do and there’s no better time to get started.”

The Lance Armstrong Foundation and Demand Media’s online social conversation for health, fitness and lifestyle website LIVESTRONG.COM has announced a contest on YouTube called “Dare To Share Your Story.” The contest will be closed
LIVESTRONG.COM Announces ‘Dare To Share Your Story’ Video Contest On YouTube

When not locking lips with new girlfriend Kate Hudson, Lance Armstrong gets tied up in other activities including his Lance Armstrong Foundation which recently launched LiveStrong.com - a website dedicated to education on and promoting healthy life habits.

I was intrigued and spent some time clicking through the various links and categories and have to say that it’s a good resource for the beginner looking to get motivated. There are daily tips, articles, and videos on various health topics like nutrition, fitness, and general health science. An entire social network of members helps to get you involved and “Dares” help motivate you to stay on track.

I especially like the tools that this site provides such easy access to. Want to lose weight? It provides you with food journals and activity logs, calorie and body fat calculators. Want to get pregnant? There are ovulation calendars and due date calculators. Want to stay young? There are experts giving stories and advice.

For the advanced, this site is more of a review and won’t be as much of a value since many of the tools exist in your own head or home. Otherwise this is a great little site to mark as a favorite and visit for inspiration and ideas!