Yay Me!

I did it!  I stepped on that demon scale and it actually said I've lost some weight!  When I left for the hospital 3 weeks ago today I weighed 253.7 pounds, and this morning the scale said 236.7, so that is a total loss of 17 pounds.  Not bad for 3 weeks!  Abby had dance this morning for the first time in about a month, and I saw a lot of friends that I haven't seen, and they all commented on how good I look, so that was a nice bonus to my day as well!

Tonight was my first bariatric surgery support group at the Mayo Clinic.  I was nervous about going, because I kind of felt like I was going to an addicts meeting and I was going to have to stand up in front of everyone and say, "Hi, my name is Kristi and I'm a fatty", or something to that effect, but it actually turned out to be a good experience.  Technically I am an addict, I guess, I certainly am addicted to food!  There were two meetings, and the first was for people who had surgery a year or more ago, and the second for people who had surgery less than a year ago.  I got there a little early and was able to see everyone attending the meeting before mine, and was not happy to see what I would consider a room full of overweight people.  I thought that after a year everyone would be smaller, so I got a little nervous, but then realized that I don't know where they started from, so who am I to judge the way they look now.  I did also find out that several of them have put back a lot of weight on, because they started bad habits again.  Also, those that put the weight back on seem to be mostly people who had lap band surgery and not gastric bypass, so that made me feel better.  The main difference in the lap band and the gastric bypass is that since they don't cut away part of the stomach for the lap band then there really aren't any foods that will make you sick.  You also still feel hunger, which you don't with the bypass.  As long as you chew the food enough you can eat anything with the lap band, which apparently a lot of people do.  I'm definitely glad I chose the bypass. 

Anyway, back to the meeting - the topic for tonight's meeting was reasons we eat even though we aren't hungry, well, I don't really care about that right now, so I wasn't sure I was going to get anything out of the meeting.  But thankfully I ended up being the only person who showed up for the less than a year surgery group.  There was another woman there, but she has not had surgery yet, and just wanted to hear peoples experiences.  So, it ended up being me basically telling my story to this other woman, but also being able to hear from the nutritionist, nurse, and psychologist that everything that I'm going through is completely normal.  It was just what I needed right now, and I'm so thankful that I went.  They assured me that there are normally a whole lot more people in attendance, and made me promise to come back next month. 

I also wanted to share some pictures of what my meals look like in a day. These pictures are my three main meals, and I also get 3 snacks, which consist of 8 ounces of milk normally. I eat on small plates now, so I've put my hand in a couple of the pictures, so you can see what a small amount of food it actually is.

Breakfast:  One scrambled egg and 1 oz. of applesauce

Lunch:  3 ozs of lean lunch meat, 1/2 cheese stick and some goldfish

Dinner:  1/2 cup of pasta with chicken, zucchini, red bell peppers, eggplant, and carrots

I'll hopefully be able to post some new pictures of myself next week, as long as I'm down a total of 20 pounds!  I said in the beginning that I would only post pictures of myself every 20 pounds - I can't believe I'm already close to that!