Five months out

Today is my five month anniversary since my surgery. I can eat more than last month, but not a lot more. My scars are mostly healed. (Pictures next month.) I'm still not ravenously hungry and I'm closing in on my goal weight. Here are my pictures:




I have no idea why one came out smaller than the other!

I'll do measurements later. It's bed time.

Runner's High

I think I finally felt it!

Yesterday I decided to skip my weekly track interval workout in favor of a long run at the gym. I hadn't done a long run in over a week and, besides, it was raining out!

Normally when I run, I spend a lot of time mentally pushing myself to continue. I concentrate on my run in very short increments. Like 1-2 minutes at a time.

Typical self-talk:

Okay, it's been two minutes. So only 30 seconds and then I'll be half way to the first 5 minutes. Okay, now I'm half way to the first 5 minutes. Now only 2 more minutes until I've done 5 minutes. One more minute. I've gone 5 minutes -- I'm half way to the first 10 minutes!

Lather, rinse and repeat.

Plus I keep reminding myself that I have gone however far it is that I'm planning to do this time before. Or, if it's the beginning of the week and I'm upping my time, I concentrate on getting to the time I've run before and then seeing how I feel.

Yeah, it sounds a little crazy, but if I thought "you've got 28 more minutes to go," I'd completely give up.

So yesterday I'm running and thinking and watching the tvs without any sound and mentally singing along to my iPod Nano and I look down expecting to have gone about 2 minutes and it was closer to eight! This kept happening to me throughout the run. I was running easily and not dying inside. I had no doubt I could make the whole 33 minutes even though this is my first week at 33 minutes. I started to suspect I could have done the whole thing a bit faster.

I know I have my Silicon Valley Tri Club workouts to thank for this. The weekly intervals at the track, the weekly swim drills and the weekly "New to the Sport" workout are all pushing me to do more than I thought I was capable of and really improving my stamina.

You know, if this keeps up, I may actually turn into a runner. Something I never thought I'd think let alone type.

I really am a Small

Since I have lost a bunch of weight, people have been telling me how tiny I am. But now it's official. Today I went clothes shopping and all the tops I bought were size Small!

I seemed to have skipped right over Medium too. Most of the tops in my closet are Large so I'm going to have to do some purging and maybe even more shopping. I'm trying not to buy too much until I get to goal, but I can't be running around in tops that are many sizes too big for me.

I had a bit of a WOW moment during the pants portion of my shopping too. First, I thought I'd be a 10P or 12P based on how my 14Ps have been fitting. So I picked up a bunch of them and headed to the nearest dressing room. I tried on the first pair and they were big so I assumed they were the 12Ps. But they were the 10Ps! It seems that some 10Ps are big on me. I ended up buying one pair in an 8P and one in a 10P.

But the greatest part of this shopping experience is that I was able to be PICKY about what I bought and still found about as many things to buy as I used to when I really couldn't afford to be that picky. Everything cost a lot less than I was expecting too. Plus-sized clothes really are more expensive than regular sizes, it seems.

My Goal Weight

I just realized that I am now below my original goal weight! Which was 145 pounds. I picked that because I knew I could do it and I'd been that weight after my last big dieting effort and been happy with it and maintained it for about a year.

Later on I realized WLS is different and I could get lower so I lowered my goal to 140. Then to 135. Now it's 132 because that's the first weight where I cross the line from overweight to normal on the BMI scale. I decided I wasn't going to go through all of this and not have a normal BMI.

But I expect to get lower than that.

I'm not sure how much though. I'd like to have 18% body fat which would put me around 116. Which is where my surgeon thinks I can go. But I think I might have too much excess skin to get that low so I'm aiming for more like 120.

I also wanted to get to 130-ish by 6 months and I've got 5 more weeks to go until that point. I'll have to lose an average of 2.5 lb. a week to make it, but I think I can do it.

Getting my life back

People always talk about how their surgeon or their surgery gave them their live back. I always thought I had a life, even pre-op. I was one of those "I don't let my weight hold me back" kind of people. But now that I've lost over 75 pounds, I can see that I did lose some quality of life even with doing my best not to.

For example:

-I can bend over to tie my shoes and don't have to sit down to do it

-I can shop for clothes pretty much anywhere (well, except Lane Giant)

-I can buy exercise clothes (they don't tend to come in the larger sizes)

-I'm off my blood pressure meds and my resting heart rate is in the low 60s most days

-I can run for 30 minutes

-I can bike for 16 miles

-I no longer suffer from gas, get massive cases of hiccups or constantly burp and belch

-My boobs are no longer "hungry" (I haven't stained a shirt with food in months)

-Sometimes I prefer to stand instead of always sitting the minute I am not moving

-People smile at me more in public and hold the door open for me more

-If I bump into people, they don't give me the evil eye, but often apologize even if it was totally my fault

-I don't feel self-conscious or defensive when I show up for group workouts with my Triathlon club; I look like I belong

-My GERD is gone along with the back ache from my hiatal hernia

-It's easier to get in and out of the car

-In the TMI category: It's easier to keep clean and I haven't had skid marks in my underwear in months

I'm sure there are more, but I'm already starting to take them for granted. Which is why I decide to document them.

Champion Swim Clinic - Week 1

I'm attending a swim clinic on Sundays. Today we worked on balance, which turns out to mean "body position in the water". Apparently a lot of us sink when we breath or just sink in general.

In addition to some really helpful drills, we got video-taped swimming and then got to go over our tapes with the coach.

My video was embarrassingly bad. Not only do I sink when I breath, my legs are too far in the water and I'm not doing something correctly with my hands. (What I'm not sure yet. Maybe next session they'll go over arms?) Oh and I'm not swiveling my hips. (I was supposed to swivel my hips?!)

But there is some good news. The timing on my arms appears to be fine. Some people were "rushing their strokes" or "windmilling". Apparently I don't do that part wrong -- just all the other parts.

I'm so glad I signed up for this. Just doing laps at pool would not have corrected any of these issues, because most of them I didn't know I was doing wrong. Swimming is the most technical of the three sports in triathlon and having good technique makes the most difference there, from what I can tell.

Which is not to say that my coached bike workouts and coached interval training won't help me too. But there is a lot less I'm doing wrong there so it's really more about building up the endurance and the distances.

I have to say I'm a bit stunned by how badly I swam this week. I think I got over-confident after swimming for half an hour back in Nov. I haven't swum since and that turned out to be a bad idea, because now my swimming is worse than my running, believe it or not.

Joining a Tri Club and coached workouts.

I joined a triathlon club (Silicon Valley Triathlon Club) and I'm so excited. Everyone was so friendly at the Open House on Monday. Plus I won a gift certificate to TriSports.com so I can get some equipment I need. Finally, for my $65 yearly dues, I can participate in a bunch of coached workouts and they have all helped me so much already after just one week.

First I went to the Tues. night track workouts. These are interval training and some stretching after. I only got in 2.8 miles instead of my usual 3.25+ and I was the slowest one out there, but when I went to run again on Thurs., I had improved so much. I ran my entire 30 minutes at 4.8 when I usually can only do that for 5 or 10 minutes at the most and I'm down to 4.6 by the end of the workout and definitely for the second interval. But I did my second run at 4.8 too!

Then I went to the Wed. swim session, which costs extra, but not that much ($7 drop-in fee) and learned that I was lifting my head when I breathed and this was causing me to sink in the water. I worked on it and improve it a lot. I also signed up for an additional swim clinic that is taking place over the next two months on alternate Sundays.

Saturday, I went to the "New to the Sport" workout. First we did squats. Yuck! I hate squats! I did okay, not great. Then we went out and biked for 16 miles. That's the farthest I've biked so far. I was okay, but slow until we hit the hills. I have not been doing any hill work up until now. It showed.

Plus my front derailer is not working properly. So I'd try to shift and it wouldn't shift. I'd eventually get it to shift but by then I'd be in the middle of the hill and had lost my momentum. I had to walk three times on the way out. I really hate that.

On the way back, it wasn't so bad. It was mostly downhill and I only had to walk up one hill and only because of my derailer problems. If I had been able to downshift in time, I think I would have been fine.

I dropped my bike off at the shop on the way home and hope my derailer problem gets fixed.

Then, at the end of the month, we'll do an open water swim so I need to figure out how to rent a wetsuit for it. I don't want to buy one while I am still losing weight. Because then I'll just have to buy another one a few months later. But I have this workout and the last swim clinic workout that both need wet suits so maybe I just need to break down and buy one. Dilemmas, dilemmas.

Mexican Egg Bites

I made a new egg bite recipe and this one I hit the first time out! No pictures this time because I figured I'd have to tweak the recipe a bit first.

Ingredients

5 eggs
1/3 c. salsa (use as spicy as you want, I went with medium out of deference to my non-spicy family)
1 tsp butter
3 green onions
2 garlic gloves
5-6 mushrooms
2 mini-bell peppers (I used red ones)
1 c. Mexican blend shredded cheese, reduced fat

Pre-heat oven to 350 F

Saute peppers, onions, garlic cloves and mushrooms in 1 tsp of butter.

Set aside when done and let cool.

Scramble the 5 eggs in a medium bowl. Add the cheese and salsa. Once the sauteed veggies are cooled down a bit, add them too.

Scoop into well-greased mini-muffin pans.

Bake at 350 F for 30 minutes.

Makes 24 "bites" of spicy goodness.

4 month update

Yes, I know I'm over four months out. Once again, I took the pictures and measurements and didn't do anything with them for a few weeks.




I was looking at my pictures from much earlier too and, wow, what a difference. I think I need to make another collage.

Measurements:

Bust - 38" - 3" loss - yeah, finally!
Chest - 32" - 1" loss
Waist - 34" - 0" loss
Stomach - 43" - 4" loss!
Hips - 42" - 2" loss
Thigh - 19.5" - 1.5" loss
Calf - 15" - 0" loss
Arm - 11.5" - .5" loss

A bit uneven this month. But big losses where it was needed most (bust & stomach).

I'm hoping I'll hit a size 10 soon. I want to go clothes shopping but I'm trying to muscle through size 12 to save money. Most of my 14s aren't *that* loose.