MRI , Thai Food and Bellydancing

Last night, I went for Thai food with my dear friend since grade 7.  I haven't seen her since the end of November, which would have been, my highest recorded weight, so I was kind of anxious to see if she'd notice a difference in me.  So we get there and I take off my winter coat (that I couldn't even get done up in November) and...nothing.  We sit down, and I'm thinking ok...she's not really a noticer...I'm sure after we get settled, she'll notice.  So we're chatting away and I mention that I like her hair.  And she says "oh I love what YOU'VE done with your hair!"  I really haven't changed my hairstyle in years, so I'm a little confused.  I tell her that my hair's the same and she's like "oh no...it looks SO good!  I love the way it's hanging...it's really framing your face beautifully!" and then suddenly, the light goes on!  I say "do you think maybe it's not my hair, but the fact that I've lost about 45lbs?"  And THEN she finally figured out YES...it's not the hair!  So, while it wasn't the earth shattering "oh my GOD...LOOK at you!!!" reaction I was secretly hoping for, I AM happy that there was definitely something noticeable.

Then, today was my MRI for my knee.  They made me arrive an hour early, which just confuses me...why did I need to sit around for an extra hour??  Fortunately, there was a TV in the waiting room, so I got to watch coverage of the earthquake in Chile...where my next door neighbour is right now.. yikes!  I hope they're ok.  But anyway, the MRI:  I don't know how many of you have had one of these...this was my first (and I hope my last!)  Because it was for my knee, I didn't have to have my head in there...thank jeebus!  I don't know how an MRI machine is designed or specifically how it works, but it's like they took every loud, jarring, terrifying noise available, and put it in one big, scary machine.  Not cool! And also, have you ever noticed that on "House", like 100% of the time they have the patient in the MRI machine, they DIE!  Everything's going fine, and then the next thing you know, their vital signs disappear and they all have to run in there and resuscitate the person.  So obviously, that was on my mind.  There was a little note that came with the appointment that said if you're claustrophobic, get your Dr. to prescribe some sedatives for you.  I would suggest that even if you're NOT claustrophobic, you should get some.  That was a jarring little experience.  I hope though, that they saw what they needed to see and now I can finally get some help.  I will say though, my mobility is MUCH improved thanks to the weight loss.  So that's good!

The last thing for today: I am seriously considering joining a belly dancing class.  I don't think I'm ready for a health club yet, but for some reason, belly dancing appeals to me, in spite of my ginormous belly which I would basically be swinging all over tarnation.  Really someone could get hurt.  I haven't actually signed up for it, but I'm 90% sure I will.  Has anyone taken a class?  Is it awesome??

FIFTY!!!!!!!!

I have FIFTY followers!  Wooo!  That is big, big excitement for me!!  I love this little community!  You guys are the best!!

I Knew There Had To Be A Reason...

...why I can't seem to stop cramming food in my cram-hole!  So I looked at the calendar and yep...it's EXACTLY that time of the month that turns 90% of normal mild-mannered women into non-stop eating machines.  How frustrating!!  However, it's nice to know that I can pretty much set my watch by when I'll be feeling this way.  Now if I could just get out of the crackers and smoked salmon cream cheese!

A New Low!

Well Sisterhood of the Band, you have, once again, come to my rescue!  The "eat more" plan has worked!!  Stepped on the scale this morning and saw a 3lb loss!  Praise Jeebus!

And so I say to you, Sisters...if you are stuck, and you are religiously eating 700-1000 calories a day, and you are walking around starving but terrified to put another bite of anything in your mouth for fear of going over your calories: EAT!!!  Have something yummy!  Throw caution to the wind for a few days and eat when your body says it's hungry!  Which, I am learning is very different from when it says "well...I could eat..."

Oh...this is good day!

You Must See This!

If you haven't checked out Jen's blog today, I beg you...you must!  It's SO thought provoking!  Go...now!

Thanks Jen, for posting it!

Fill #2

So this morning, I got my second fill.  And it was soooo easy!  I just got a little top up, because honestly, based on how long I can go between meals (about 3 hours or sometimes more), I thought I might only need a bit.  It's been explained to me that the idea of the fill isn't to prevent stuff from going down...and no matter what your fill level is, the amount your "new" stomach can hold is the same...all the fill does is keeps the food in there longer.  The goal is to go at least 4 hours on one cup of food.  And honestly, I think I'm pretty close to there now.  Also, I've lost 9 lbs since I had my first fill 2 weeks ago (which kind of surprised me, since I felt like I wasn't even losing, and well...yep, I was!) and she told me, if you can believe it, that is TOO much!!  Ah well...this is the kind of rebel I want to be!

I LIKE being able to still eat red meat and bread.  I don't want to have to stop eating that stuff.  I just want to be able to eat a little and stay full for a long time.  And although I try to start with protein all the time, I know that if I throw a few bites of a carb in there (aka: 3 bites of potato), I will stay full for longer.  I've never had a PB and I like it that way!  I hope I never have one - they sound awful!

I really like my Dr.'s office...they are totally willing to give you a fill whenever you feel like you need one, but I also really like the guidance they give you along with them.  So fingers crossed, I will be still able to swallow everything, but that I stay full for 4 hours at a time. Sweet spot, here I come!

Learning

Well...thanks for all the great advice, seasoned band-sistahs!  This week, since my tortured post about how it can possibly be that I'm eating so little and not losing, some of you came to my rescue...and I think you may actually have rescued me!

The past several weeks, although I've had one fill, I've still been subsisting on 700-1100 calories per day, and often, FREAKIN' STARVING!!!  I'm talking full-on-stomach-rumbling-gnaw-my-own-arm-off kind of hunger.  And I've been feeling it and mentally telling myself "yes...this is it...this is what losing weight feels like"...except I wasn't losing weight.  And so you told me to eat more.  And I have.  Not crazy...frankly, mostly because the band keeps me from getting crazy (thank gods!), but you know, not letting myself get starving.  Eating enough to keep the vicious hunger pangs at bay.  And it seems to be working!  I'm not posting my actual loss yet, because I need to see it for a couple of days, but the important thing...and the thing I was terrified about...THERE IS NO GAIN!!  Even though I went out for Thai food with my BFF this week AND had a cougar night where I drank what surely must have been gallons of red wine.

This week, I feel like I have a lot to look forward to: tomorrow I'm going swimming with my mum and my little guy - there is a fitness swim and a parent-and-child-swim at the same time, so mum and I are going to play AND get a few laps in.  Then on Tuesday is fill #2, and I am SO excited for it!  I feel like I might actually not be that far from my sweet spot, so cross your fingers for me.  I'm definitely going into the week looking up!  Have a great one, everyone!

Ahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

Yep...star struck indeed!  Welcome Catherine!  lol!

And The Beautiful Blogger Awards Go To...

First of all, thank you's go to TracyZ and Stephanie for nominating me for the Beautiful Blogger award!  I was very touched, not only because I'm a relatively new blogger, but because I love reading both of YOUR blogs so much!  I love this little community, and I really look forward to hearing what you ladies (and gents...I do follow 2 boy bandits) have to say!  I especially love these awards because I really think that in nominating someone, you're holding their blog up for others to enjoy, in case they may not have started following yet.  Very positive :)  And now...what you've all been waiting for:

Here are the rules:


* Thank the person who nominated you for this award;
* Copy the award and post it in your blog;
* Link to the blog of the person who nominated you;
* Tell seven interesting things about yourself;
* Nominate seven bloggers and;
* Post links to the blogs of your nominees

Ok...here are the interesting things about me.  Please don't use any of them against me.  I hope you're sitting down.

1. I bit my nails until I was 15.  My father told me that no man would ever marry me if I didn't stop biting them , so I stopped.  I remain unmarried.  However, Michael (he's the baby daddy) has been around for 14 years.  He doesn't care whether or not I bite my nails.  Moral of the story: sometimes daddy is wrong.

2.  I can do an entire one-woman Les Miserables.  And Joseph and The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.  I don't share that with everyone, although I am secretly pretty proud of it.

3. I deeply, deeply dislike women with narrow feet.  Bitches get ALL the strappy sandles.  I hope they choke.

4. I could eat Pad Thai for every meal of every day and never get sick of it.  The spicier the better.

5. I decided to become a funeral director on a whim because I wanted to have an interesting job.  The decision was made in about 1 minute.  My parents were (and remain) mortified (pun intended).  Sometimes I chase my father, wiggling my fingers at him and saying "dead people fingers!"

6. I flirt with everyone I meet.  I can't help myself.  Male or female.  Doesn't matter.  It's ridiculous.  Someone needs to smack me.

7. If I could, I would sell everything I have here and move to Belfast, Northern Ireland.  I love it there!

And now...the Nominees are, in no particular order and let me tell you, this was HARD to do!!

•Catherine: Hers was the first blog I found before I had surgery, and she is the reason I'm blogging now.  She is smart and successful (with weight loss AND in life), and she just seems like she has it all in perspective.  She's my Oprah.  She doesn't follow me, but if she did, I'd be all star-struck.

•Jen: She is another person who is working the hell out of her band!  Her pictures are so inspiring, and she started out close to where I am starting, so she shows me that I CAN do it!  I always appreciate her comments on my blog entries too!

•Athena's Melting:  This blog just exudes style!  She is funny and fabulous, and she's recently banded, so our journey is kind of happening in tandem.  I couldn't be happier to share it with her.

•Vanessa:  She is smart, outspoken, and I just like how she shares everything.  Also, I think she might be a little bit of a badass!

•Band-Babe:  Always thought provoking.  This is someone who has been very successful with the band, but also who still asks the important questions about why she's doing this.  Very insightful.  Highly recommend following her if you're not already!

•Justine:  She's British...need I say more?  I do?  Well ok...she reminds me of me, if I were British!  She's recently banded, like me, and I just love her written voice. 

•Sandy Lee:  My sister in SWLC - that's where we both had our surgeries.  I love the links she posts, and all the support she gives.  Also, woohoo Canada!!
 
Phew!  So there you have it!  I hope that if you're not following these wonderful ladies, that you will...they area all well worth the read!

Can Someone Please Tell Me...

...how it is POSSIBLE to eat 1100 calories or significantly less every single day, and not lose any weight??  According to the many metabolic rate calculators I've found online, just sitting around doing nothing, I'm burning well over 2000 calories per day.  So the rule of calories in/calories out should mean I'm totally losing weight, right??  Um, no.  And don't give me any of this "starvation mode" nonsense, because I don't buy it.

ARG!!!  Frustrating!!!

Restriction? What Restriction?

Well...now that the dust has settled on the first fill, I can say yes, I am definitely going to need another one.  I know nobody gets restriction after the first fill, but you know, I was kinda hoping that I was going to be that one mythic girl...the one the rest of the bandsters talk about...the girl who got perfect restriction after the first fill!!!  Yeah...no.

This weekend has seen a lot of me being really hungry.  And at the same time, terrified to eat anything because man, 1000 calories or less really adds up FAST!  And at the same time, wanting to eat everything in sight because of the starving-ness.  Today, in an effort to escape my family on family day (oh the irony), I went to Shopper's Drug Mart and found myself in front of the potato chip wall, dreaming of putting a bag of Doritos or tube of Pringles in my cart.  It was almost as though I was mesmerized.  I actually don't remember leaving the aisle.  But I know that at some point I did.  Without a bag or tube of anything snacky and delicious.  Which is a total NSV...but man, I'm getting tired of being starving.  Or at the very least, tired of being starving without seeing HUGE movement on the scale.  I think I need to stop watching The Biggest Loser, and have some more realistic expectations.  The numbers are coming down...I just wish I wasn't obsessing over eating all the time.

I wanted to say thanks to TracyZ who nominated me for a Beautiful Blogger award...SO flattered!  I WILL follow the rules and pay it forward, but I wanted to get this stuff down first :)

Thoughts On The First Fill

So I'm 2 days past the first fill, and I think I really do notice a difference. Not so much that I feel restriction - seems like everything is still going down well - it's more that I have been satisfied with much less food and I haven't been looking to snack. And I really think that's going to be key for me.

I'm a grazer. A bite, lick and taster. There's quite a bit of meal preparation and snacking involved in feeding 2 boys (well 3, if you count the big boy, which I do, and he eats like a horse!) So that means there's a lot of opportunity to take a "little bite" of a peanut butter and jam sammich, or to eat the yummy crusts, or to lick the knife...well...you get the picture. So this week, I've decided that I am REALLY going to watch that. No eating the last "little" bite off the plate before I throw it in the dishwasher. No taking a "little" bite of the granola bar before I hand it over to the small person. I've noticed that when I talk about what I've eaten, I use the word "little" a lot. But a bunch of "little" adds up to a lot. And it doesn't take much to get to over 1000 calories in a day. It adds up with lightning speed! And honestly, I haven't been super hungry, so why am I doing it anyway?

The question of the week: AM I HUNGRY??????????? And sometimes the answer to that question is "yeah, I'm frickin' STARVING!!!!!!" But a lot of times the answer is no, and so I'm just gonna walk away.

Yesterday was my official weigh in day, and I was only down .5 of a lb. And I was pretty down about it (even though I expected it because of the Superbowl party, but you know, at the same time I really didn't because I'd been SO good otherwise...but I digress...). And then today, lying in bed, I just FELT thinner. So I got on the scale. Yep...down 4 lbs! The moral of this story? Screw official weigh in days! I'ma take the scale victories where I can get them. And today I effing KILLED IT!!!

Nope...No Gore

It was a gore-free affair. It took less than 10 minutes from the time I arrived in the office until I was on my way out again. I tried not to look at the big needle. There was no talk of numbing agents...just some pushing on my tummy, a little tiny stick, and then some digging around to find the port (mildly unpleasant, but nothing horrible by any means), then a little band aid, a sip of water, and I was on my way.

For lunch, I had 1/2 a cup of refried beans, with a little cheese and a tbsp of sour cream (and lots of chipotle hot sauce...my ode to chipotle hot sauce will come in another blog entry...I freakin' LOVE that stuff!!) and so far, still not hungry. As for restriction, well, I haven't actually tried to eat anything chunky, so I guess we shall see, but honestly, I don't feel any difference. However, what do I know at this point, really?

On another topic entirely, I found this on my friend Allyson's facebook...she's a fat activist, and often really makes me think, and I thought this was very interesting. I'd love to know your thoughts:

My First Fill

It's happening today at 11:50am. I'm both excited and terrified. I've read a lot of blogs here, but none that really delve into the fill experience...so watch this space for all the gory details, because I plan to post them. Especially if there's gore! Because in my humble opinion, with Valentine's Day looming (see new blog layout), there needs to be a little gore. You know...Valentine's Day, for me, would be much better off as a slasher holiday. "My Bloody Valentine" style. The OLD version, not the new, prettied up one with the dude from Supernatural. I'm talking real, human hearts, getting boiled up with the hot dogs. Awesomeness!

Well...that sort of trailed of in a direction that I did NOT originally intend to go in...anyhoo...wish me luck!

Now THIS Girl, I Know!

She's the girl who stalks the food table...who wanders over again and again, and only takes a bite at a time, and it doesn't seem like much, and I'm sure it wasn't, if you look at how much she ate at the LAST Superbowl party...but still...I'm pretty ticked at her just the same.

After all the willpower I've shown over the past weeks...why is it that spinach dip proved my downfall?? Spinach dip that I brought, no less!!! Damn you, spinach dip!!! DAMN YOU and all your creamy deliciousness!!! With your yummy fresh bread bowl and your deceptively nutritious spinach, all "ooooh look...I'm GOOD for you!" when we all know you're just swimming in a pool of mayonnaise and sour cream! Damn you to hell!

And I don't even want to talk about the wine. Tomorrow is another day. Yes...yes it is...

Who IS This Girl??

So today, I went out for coffee with "the ladies", which is the regular Friday thing - drop the boy at preschool and then go and chit chat with the ladies, who are a fantastic group of other mommies (and a gramma) who I am also fortunate enough to have as my neighbours. Two of them know about Mona, and are incredibly suppotive of my decision. And today, although they are supposed to be "being good" along with me, they decided they're going to be naughty and go out someplace for lunch. And they invited me.

As we sat there, discussing possible dining locations that are dripping with deliciousness, I just knew in my head that I wouldn't be joining them. I want to. I love hanging out with them, and we always have so much fun when we're out together, and yet I knew that I would say no. I didn't say no right then, but when they called me just now to to see if I was coming, I declined. This weekend is my dad's birthday, and I'm also going to a Superbowl party, so I know there will be wine, and I just decided that no...I don't want to sabbotage myself today. I might not be that strong tomorrow, or next week, but for today, I'm just not gonna do it. And I feel pretty effing spectacular about my choice!

I don't know who this girl is, but I love her! Where has she been all my life??

I've Lost My Three Year Old!

Don't panic...this is stolen from TracyZ, who's lost her dogs! I've lost MORE than my three year old, actually, since he weighs about 37lbs! Cool! Everybody...this will be so fun...post what "thing" you've lost!

Weigh In Day

Well...I was hoping to hit 40lbs lost today, but I'm short a pound. But yay!! 39lbs lost since the start of this journey! Which makes 5lbs lost for the week, which isn't too shabby! Although, I weighed in at less yesterday...how does one gain 3lbs in a day, I don't know...however, today is official weigh in day, so this is officially official!

The Squeaky Wheel

Today I was a squeaky wheel. I went to my family Dr. and complained about the knee surgeon dude, and I told him, in Gilly language (which can get a little colourful), that I was NOT going to be dealing with that dude, so pull whatever strings you need to pull, because I have waited nine months, and I'm not waiting any longer. So he told me to have the MRI, and we will find another Dr. I also told him to make a note of the fact that this Dr. is not a fat-friendly dude, so don't send any other fatties his way. I am cruisading for the fatties now. My new mission!

Last night, I went to Milestones for dinner. Fantastic place, very yummy food! I was with a group of ladies only 2 of whom know of my Mona. I went online and researched the menu beforehand - the site had fantastic nutritional information - and I planned my dinner. I had an 8oz sirloin steak with garlic mashed potatoes and seasonal veggies. Again I asked the girl to serve me 1/2 the meal and put the other half in a take away container. She did exactly as I asked, and I ate about 3/4 of the portion served to me, and took the rest home, and had it for lunch today. The ladies oooh-ed and ahhh-ed about my willpower as they had dessert and I had none. It was a great night out! And much cheaper than I usually come away from a dinner out! Ah, the fringe benefits!

Tomorrow is weigh in day...send me skinny vibes!!