Dixon
5 months out
Mar 19, 2008
5 months out and the VSG continues to be the best decision of my life.
The weight loss got really funky this month. It was painfully slow and by the third week I thought I was going to end up with a 10 pound weight loss which is still decent, but with 80-100 left to go I worried about the process getting slower and slower and this process taking another year or more. Except for a taco that I had been craving for days and an alcoholic drink, I've followed my diet and I've worked out almost every day. I just can't do any more. Anyway, two days ago the scale dropped 6 pounds over night. I have no idea how that happened and wondered if the scale had broken, but the scale at the gym confirms it. I'll take it and I'm very, very happy with a 15 pound weight loss this month. That gives me a total of 142 pounds including my 2 week preop diet.
With the month ending strong I really feel like I'm on the downward slope of this journey. I feel absolutely certain I'll lose 100% of my excess weight and I'm hoping I'll do it by the end of the year. I'll be in the 200s in the next few weeks and I'm super excited about that. I'm starting to feel like I'm a normal person instead of a source of ridicule or pity. I'm also back at a weight that I was at for a long time and it was also a time I went out a lot and I have a ton of really nice cloths which I'm enjoying. I had better enjoy them now because in a few months they'll be going to Goodwill. After that I'll have to start buying new cloths because I haven't been in that territory in more than 10 years. It will be nice to buy a new wardrobe and to be excited about the prospect.
I'd also like to tell people to make sure they take their sublingul B-12. I thought I was getting enough in my multi vitamin, but I was wrong. Or at least I hope I was wrong. I've been experiencing a loss of tactile sensitivity in the skin on my legs, a bit in me feet and a very, very annoying numbness and tingling in my fingers (which could be separate and be carpel tunnel). I had started taking a sublingal B-12 before I went to see my PCP and my tests came back all normal for B-12. I had him do two tests which are not normally done but much more accurate when it comes to checking B-12 and if your body is processing the B-12. Those were also normal. I have to assume that my B-12 levels had caught back up by test time and what I have is residual nerve damage. I did a ton of research on my own and there isn't much this can be but a B-12 deficiency and it can take some time for the body to repair it's self. I'm going to give it another month or so of taking a heavy B-12 dosage and see how I feel before I start down the road of seeing specialists and seeing if it's something else. One symptom I forgot to mention was extreme fatigue in my thigh muscles. That mostly cleared up a week after starting the heavy B-12 dose, which makes me hopeful that this is not something else.
I encourage those who are considering this procedure to strongly consider taking this step. I could have never done this on my own. It's not a solution, but it's an awesome tool. There are so many times when I was stressed out where I would have eaten a couple days worth of calories in a single sitting, thus starting another downward spiral. Now I just can't eat like that. Thanks to the loss of ghrelin my desire to eat isn't even that strong. I have no doubt that this procedure has added decades to my life, but even more than that decades of an active and healthy life.
The weight loss got really funky this month. It was painfully slow and by the third week I thought I was going to end up with a 10 pound weight loss which is still decent, but with 80-100 left to go I worried about the process getting slower and slower and this process taking another year or more. Except for a taco that I had been craving for days and an alcoholic drink, I've followed my diet and I've worked out almost every day. I just can't do any more. Anyway, two days ago the scale dropped 6 pounds over night. I have no idea how that happened and wondered if the scale had broken, but the scale at the gym confirms it. I'll take it and I'm very, very happy with a 15 pound weight loss this month. That gives me a total of 142 pounds including my 2 week preop diet.
With the month ending strong I really feel like I'm on the downward slope of this journey. I feel absolutely certain I'll lose 100% of my excess weight and I'm hoping I'll do it by the end of the year. I'll be in the 200s in the next few weeks and I'm super excited about that. I'm starting to feel like I'm a normal person instead of a source of ridicule or pity. I'm also back at a weight that I was at for a long time and it was also a time I went out a lot and I have a ton of really nice cloths which I'm enjoying. I had better enjoy them now because in a few months they'll be going to Goodwill. After that I'll have to start buying new cloths because I haven't been in that territory in more than 10 years. It will be nice to buy a new wardrobe and to be excited about the prospect.
I'd also like to tell people to make sure they take their sublingul B-12. I thought I was getting enough in my multi vitamin, but I was wrong. Or at least I hope I was wrong. I've been experiencing a loss of tactile sensitivity in the skin on my legs, a bit in me feet and a very, very annoying numbness and tingling in my fingers (which could be separate and be carpel tunnel). I had started taking a sublingal B-12 before I went to see my PCP and my tests came back all normal for B-12. I had him do two tests which are not normally done but much more accurate when it comes to checking B-12 and if your body is processing the B-12. Those were also normal. I have to assume that my B-12 levels had caught back up by test time and what I have is residual nerve damage. I did a ton of research on my own and there isn't much this can be but a B-12 deficiency and it can take some time for the body to repair it's self. I'm going to give it another month or so of taking a heavy B-12 dosage and see how I feel before I start down the road of seeing specialists and seeing if it's something else. One symptom I forgot to mention was extreme fatigue in my thigh muscles. That mostly cleared up a week after starting the heavy B-12 dose, which makes me hopeful that this is not something else.
I encourage those who are considering this procedure to strongly consider taking this step. I could have never done this on my own. It's not a solution, but it's an awesome tool. There are so many times when I was stressed out where I would have eaten a couple days worth of calories in a single sitting, thus starting another downward spiral. Now I just can't eat like that. Thanks to the loss of ghrelin my desire to eat isn't even that strong. I have no doubt that this procedure has added decades to my life, but even more than that decades of an active and healthy life.
4 months out
Feb 20, 2008
For me, time usually seems to fly. Weeks and months pass seemingly in a blink of an eye. I'll read a mention of something that happened a year ago and feel like it was a couple of months ago. This feeling is not the same when it comes to my life post VSG. Time seems to crawl. This past month I've become very impatient to be done with this weight loss process. It's not that I'm losing slow, I think I'm setting records when it comes to weight loss and this procedure, it's just that I want to get to the next stage of my life. In the end, time will pass at it's own pace and I'll accept that.
Month 4 marked the start of my exercise program. I could tell early in month 3 that my weight loss was starting to slow and it's very important to me to loss most the weight in the first year while the losing is easiest. In college I was a pretty serious weight lifter and a physical job kept me in decent muscular shape up to a few years ago. I started out doing a circuit program on the machines 3 days a week hitting all the muscle groups each time and trying to 30-45 minutes of cardio every day. The first ten days were pretty rough. After the first to workouts my arms were so tight the next day I couldn't fully extend them. By the third work out I was only mildly sore the next day. By week two I was doing the cardio 7 days a week walking 2-3 miles at a 20 minute/mile pace. I'm still sore in the mornings, but stretching takes care of most of it. I'm surprised how quickly I've gotten back into working out and how much I enjoy it. Perhaps I'm just replacing food addiction with exercise addiction, but that's alright for the time being. Next week I meet with a trainer and we're going to look at designing a program to get the most out of my weight lifting.
I've modified my diet. Since I'm working out I'm back to the protein bullets. I take half before my workout and the other half after my workout and I eat a meal of deli turkey and cheese on my way home form the gym. On my heavy workout days I eat a peach on my way to working out. I'm hoping the fruit helps keep my system off balance and burning calories, plus I just really like peaches. The rest of my meals I'm eating fish or chicken, sometimes canned tuna or salmon. Snacking on turkey jerky, cheese and deli turkey. I've upped my water intake to 1 gallon/day. It's an all day effort to get in that much, but most days I get it done. I've stopped the artificial sweeteners in my water. I don't know if they hurt weight loss or not, but I've always liked the tastes of plain water, so I figure I might as well if the loss doesn't bother me.
As far as weight loss goes I managed to lose 20 pounds this month, which was at the very top end of my expectations. I had really expected (hoped for) closer to 15. The weight loss has become very stop start. I'll go 3 or 4 days without a loss and then drop 2 or 3 pounds, repeat cycle. So far I've lost 127 pounds including the 2 week preop diet. I have 100 pounds left to go and I'm hoping I can average 15 pounds a month and be finishing up my weight loss in 6 months. But, if it takes longer so be it. I feel certain I'm going to loss all my excess weight and if I do it in 10 months, 12 months or 16 months it really shouldn't matter.
Month 4 marked the start of my exercise program. I could tell early in month 3 that my weight loss was starting to slow and it's very important to me to loss most the weight in the first year while the losing is easiest. In college I was a pretty serious weight lifter and a physical job kept me in decent muscular shape up to a few years ago. I started out doing a circuit program on the machines 3 days a week hitting all the muscle groups each time and trying to 30-45 minutes of cardio every day. The first ten days were pretty rough. After the first to workouts my arms were so tight the next day I couldn't fully extend them. By the third work out I was only mildly sore the next day. By week two I was doing the cardio 7 days a week walking 2-3 miles at a 20 minute/mile pace. I'm still sore in the mornings, but stretching takes care of most of it. I'm surprised how quickly I've gotten back into working out and how much I enjoy it. Perhaps I'm just replacing food addiction with exercise addiction, but that's alright for the time being. Next week I meet with a trainer and we're going to look at designing a program to get the most out of my weight lifting.
I've modified my diet. Since I'm working out I'm back to the protein bullets. I take half before my workout and the other half after my workout and I eat a meal of deli turkey and cheese on my way home form the gym. On my heavy workout days I eat a peach on my way to working out. I'm hoping the fruit helps keep my system off balance and burning calories, plus I just really like peaches. The rest of my meals I'm eating fish or chicken, sometimes canned tuna or salmon. Snacking on turkey jerky, cheese and deli turkey. I've upped my water intake to 1 gallon/day. It's an all day effort to get in that much, but most days I get it done. I've stopped the artificial sweeteners in my water. I don't know if they hurt weight loss or not, but I've always liked the tastes of plain water, so I figure I might as well if the loss doesn't bother me.
As far as weight loss goes I managed to lose 20 pounds this month, which was at the very top end of my expectations. I had really expected (hoped for) closer to 15. The weight loss has become very stop start. I'll go 3 or 4 days without a loss and then drop 2 or 3 pounds, repeat cycle. So far I've lost 127 pounds including the 2 week preop diet. I have 100 pounds left to go and I'm hoping I can average 15 pounds a month and be finishing up my weight loss in 6 months. But, if it takes longer so be it. I feel certain I'm going to loss all my excess weight and if I do it in 10 months, 12 months or 16 months it really shouldn't matter.
