Before/After pics - 11 months out

Here are some pics for you. Sorry I've not posted for a LONG while. But pictures are more fun anyway, right? :D I'm almost a year out. I'm 12 lbs from goal. I'm 132 and 5'4'', and my goal is 120. I need to get rid of this butt!! lol

My hubby, shown in the pics below is scheduled for surgery in March 2012 :D
The third picture down is an image where we put my new pic on top of the old pic so you could see the difference in thigh size :0

Progress Thus Far...

I'm down 35 lbs and 7 weeks out from my surgery. I just went thru a 16 day stall that I thought I'd never get out of : / But sure enough, I came out of it and dropped almost 7 lbs in a matter of 2 days. So I'm at 164 as of now. Still have 50 more lbs to go but I'm making progress. I'm almost halfway to my goal and I'm only 7 weeks out lol. I realize it won't be coming off as fast now as it did preop and thru the liquid diet after surgery, but still, hopefully it'll come off rather fast :)

I'm doing well on my diet. I haven't had any vomit spells yet. I've overeaten at times and been really full, but not thrown up yet or had the foamies. I've come to realize that chocolate makes my stomach hurt, not really hurt as in pain, but just feels yucky...which is a good thing, makes me not eat it as much. I think I've tried just about everything that I ate before surgery and nothings seemed to set wrong with me, so that's comforting. I just can't eat as much of it. I can eat about 2-3 oz. now and I'm surprisingly doing well with my eating/drinking together. I sometimes eat right after I drink. I don't see why you aren't supposed to do that, so I've tried it and it doesn't seem to bother me in a negative way. But I don't drink after I eat. Don't want to experience the dumping syndrome lol

Hallelujah for Pepcid AC!!!!!

So I've been doing really good on eating. The only issue I have is acid reflux. I've been taking tums and its not really working, but decided to try some off brand chewable Pepcid AC. And OMG, it works pretty instantly! Gotta be careful with that stuff or it could become addictive lol. But hey, it works! So excited about that.  I'm still in the soft foods stage, and I'm eating things I'm probably not supposed to be eating like pork, and there's probably other things too. It started as an accident but now that I'm finding it doesn't affect me or hurt me, I'm tempted to keep on it. Now I'm not an idiot. I'm not gonna go out and eat hard chewy stuff like steak or cashews or popcorn. But shredded pork, yes. Spam, yes. Cracker, yes.

We went to a festival this morning and you know festivals have all the fried stuff; fried pickles, oreos, snickers, you name it, its fried. And they have just about everything edible you can think of. Well, it smelled so stinkin good. I told my mom if I didn't have my sleeve, I'd be going to get me something (anything) right now because it just smells so good...and I'm not even hungry. Goes to show that we as ordinary individuals just like to EAT. We can smell it and just eat without being hungry, and that's how our population is so overweight. But with the sleeve, I'm not hungry and I'm still full from my 3 bites or pulled pork 3 hours ago (lol), and I know if I were to put anything else in my mouth, I would absolutely puke : / So....I'm very thankful for my sleeve :D

More weight loss!!

Yay for more weight loss, something I should probably get used to, huh? lol ...Well I had stayed at 178 for a couple days there thinking I'd hit a stall, but apparently not. Dropped to 174 this morning. Yay!!! I didn't think I'd even make it to the 160's by the end of October, and its only the beginning. So maybe I will. I'm a couple days in on soft foods. I've done very well I think. Not gotten sick. I have however decided that I'm trying to eat too much. Two ounces is probably the max I can take. I get very bloated and yucky feeling. Like I ate some chicken and cheese off my husbands nacho plate at the mexican restaurant at 11am this morning. And I've felt bloated all day; didn't eat dinner. Snacked a little on some pork roast my husband cooked only because I couldn't keep my hands off of it. Not because I was hungry or even felt the least bit empty. Now I just feel even worse. Live and learn. Tomorrow will be better.

But on a lighter note, side pains have somewhat subsided, fingers crossed. Didn't really have any today, very slightly, but too minor to count. I can move a lot easier without any pain. I'm really crossing my fingers, toes, legs and arms hoping that its going away for good. If ya got a minute, cross something for me for extra power lol

Eating today

I did okay today. I upped my calories a little which I could say is progress; I was kinda proud. But I still stayed under my carb limit of 40g. The soups I've been eating have been bothering me a little bit with my side pain, but again I'm thinking it could just be eating too fast. Well I tried Chicken Corn Chowder by Progresso this evening. And omg, its delicious and I've had no pain. I've actually eaten more than 4 bites and been done. I'm probably on spoon #15 with no pain yet. I'm pretty durn excited :)

Looking forward to trying soft foods this weekend. I know I've said that more than once, but I am very excited. Going to try only 1 soft food per day so if I get sick I know which food is the culpret lol

What I'm eating...

I've had several people to ask what I'm eating because of my increasing weight loss. I honestly think its just because of the liquid diet and I'm not really eating a lot at meal time. Even though the soups and things like that should pass thru just as good as water does (no limit), maybe its just a head thing. I only end up eating a couple of tablespoons at each meal. That could be a contributing factor. But my days look similar to this:

Breakfast - protein shake
Lunch - strained soup
Dinner - strained soup
Snacks (I rarely do these) - jello, pudding, yogurt drink, ice pop
And drinking as much liquids throughout the day to stay away from dehydration; already had a scare a few days ago.

The whole thing about the sleeve taking away "hungry" has really messed me up. I pretty much have to make myself eat. I've never really been a muncher, just the person that doesn't make wise choices as to what I put in my mouth at meal time and pretty much overeating when I do eat. So it will be rather challenging to keep food in, I imagine, when moving to solids. I start soft foods this weekend, that is, if I feel like risking the stop of the rapid weight loss. I think something else that's going to be challenging is not eating and drinking at the same time when I get to solids. Not looking forward to messing up there : /

Weight Dropping

I am currently still on the liquid diet so I'm pretty much consuming a lot of strained SOUPS. Wondering if I should stay on soups instead of moving to soft foods this weekend, because of the steady weight loss I'm experiencing. I was 178 lbs this morning. I'm loving it so much, it's kinda worth just staying on liquids lol.

The gas pain in my side is still irritating me today. One girl on the forums said hers didn't go away until week 5; not cool. Another said her's went away week 2; that sounds better. I'm 9 days out. I'd appreciate if it'd go away any day now :) cause it is definitely not welcome here. Trying to walk as much as I can, but I feel like I may be overdoing it sometimes so I have to be real careful. I think I'm also eating to fast, because the side pain becomes very sharp after I eat sometimes. I really think I'm just eating too much, too fast. My mom says that, and I believe she is right on it.