11/28/2022
When you hear doctors talking about weight loss and healthy living, they all tell you the same thing; "It's a lifestyle change." When you watch shows like "My 600 lb Life" or "Too Large" you hear the doctors saying that you need to make lifestyle changes, diets don't work because they, inherently flawed, built to last a finite amount of time. And if you get to be has heavy as I am, making temporary change just isn't going to cut it.
I knew this.
I thought I was prepared for this.
To say that I was wrong would be like saying the Titanic was a boating accident.
When I first started down this road I knew that things would have to change, obviously at 272lbs I was doing something wrong. Granted PCOS was not helping in that, but still, there are a lot of people out there with this same affliction that aren't as big as I am.
When things started it was simple. I just needed to start logging everything that I ate. "Don't change anything," my doctor told me. "Just log everything that you eat for a few days to get a good idea of where you're at with your carbs, calories, and sugars."
Easy peasy.
Right?
No.
Nope.
Not at all.
Not to say that logging food is hard, it's easy with Fitbit. Most everything I eat I can scan in. Fitbit made sure to make it easy. But after three days I looked back and saw just how much I was eating. And it made me feel sick.
Almost 3,000 calories, some days more than that. Almost 400 grams of carbs a day, over 130 grams of fat, and that was after I was attempting to scale things down and be more healthy. It was just so much more than I thought I was eating. Then, when they started having me scale things down, I learned a very important lesson.
There are carbs in literally everything.
From milk, to certain cheeses, to even tea. So many carbs!
Before surgery I have to be down to less than 50 grams of carbs a day.
From 400 to under 50.
That is no small cut.
The way things stand today, I am 272 lbs, and consuming way more food than I really should be. Even though if you had asked me prior to this whole thing, I would have told you that I probably ate a little too much, but nothing to crazy.
Why do I get the feeling that his is only the first of many times where I'm going to be wrong?
12/17/2022
It's December now, and I've been working toward restricting myself.
It is so much harder than I thought it would be.
Everything I want to eat has carbs in it. And while I start dialing my carbs back, I basically have to dial back everything I want/love to eat.
I hate this shit.
And at the same time I need it.
I've already started to lose weight.
My Lark scale actually asked me if I was sure I was the person on the scale today. So that's something.
The one shining light in this whole thing so far has been Tim. He's right there with recipes, ideas, a willingness to help and the constant motivation to get me to the gym and keep going. He questions me about my food choices but in a huge overbearing way that makes me want to rebel against him and his attempts to help. It's like he knows just the right amount of judgment to dole out when I'm making poor choices, and when to walk it back.
I think the hardest thing is the soda.
I love a can or bottle of coke the way the rich white women in the 80's loved coke of a different variety. Giving that delicious non-diet brown pop up was/is still one of the hardest things I've had to do for this surgery.
But I want this.
I want this more than I want soda.
I just have to keep telling myself that.
01/15/2023
We are now in the New Year and I'm hoping that 2023 will be the year I finally take my health in my hands. What's really sad about that, is the number of times I've said the same thing and wanted the same thing, but make no real changes in that direction.
I've been actively dialing back my carbs still.
And that sucks during the holidays.
"Hey! Here is all this delicious home baked sweetness! Sucks you can't have any!"
Not that anyone actually said that to me.
Actually the people at work have been really fantastic about everything. They are really careful about what they offer me, making sure not to including me in Doordash orders that they know I can't take part in. I'm really lucky to have them being as understanding as they have been.
I had my psych evaluation the other day.
That was interesting.
I've never been evaluated that way before and I was really worried that this woman would look at me and be like, "Nope. You are not mentally well enough to get through this surgery."
She had a lot of questions that were usually on a questionnaire, but it wasn't terrible. I told her about my closet eating as a child and the stuff that still carries over today. We talked a little about that but, I got the feeling that this was not really an issue that she was concerned with. Maybe because I knew the name of the issue and could address it openly.
The one good thing I can say is that I am officially through all the holidays and managed to do it without having heavy restrictions on my diet. So bully for me.
02/05/2023
I have officially finished all of my required appointments with the doctors and nutritionists and it's officially time to schedule my surgery!
I'm down to 50 grams of carbs, most days, and I have gotten my caloric intake down as well!
It's hard and it sucks and I miss soda and bread more than I ever thought I could, but I've done it. Now I just need to wait for the surgery scheduler to call so we can get this thing rolling!
"I'm so excited! And I just can't hide it!"
02/22/2023
Pissed.
I am absolutely pissed.
I thought I was going to be having this surgery soon. Like in the next month or two soon.
But no.
I can't have surgery until June! Mid- freaking June!
It's February!
I wanted to get this thing done as soon as possible and now I'm waiting until god damned summer to do this shit! Like I don't know where I'm going to be in my training by then or if I'll have time to do this by then.
This just sucks.
All of this shit sucks.
I'm literally in tears I'm so mad.
Tim says it's okay. That we will get though it and it will be okay. But this shit is hard!
I literally don't think I have ever done anything this hard before. Maybe if I had managed to have kids in my useless ass life, but I haven't.
What the fuck am I supposed to do?
05/14/2023
It's May, and aside from terrible children things, everything else has been okay. I won't lie. I have not been keeping up with my diet. I'm just eating whatever the hell I want to and not really giving a shit. I keep using the excuse that I won't be able to eat like this once I have surgery. And Tim, despite his lack of believing my bulshit, has continued to allow me to eat like the growing black hole I am.
Today I had an appointment with my PA. she talked with me about prepping for surgery and remembering that no matter what else has happened, I need to but down to 50 grams of carbs or less a day and less than 1,200 calories. I have to be almost all the way back up to what I was before. I had an alarm set on my phone to remind me two days before I had to start my pre-op diet. But hearing it all laid out again is terrifying. How the hell am not only going to get my intake back down, but get my weight back down to what it was before I let myself go careening off the deep end again?
I got down to 255 lbs back in february. I got on the scale today:
269lbs.
I have literally gained back almost all the weight I lost.
What am I going to do if I get down to Anchorage and they tell me that I'm too heavy for surgery or that my liver is too enlarged from the carbs to make surgery even possible?
What the fuck am I going to do if I just blew this whole thing because I can't control myself around food?