That Was An Interesting Day

It is REALLY hard for me to drink a lot of water at work. Around 3 I start to chug gulps here and there--usually 30 of my 40 "work" oz come between 2:30 and 5.

I had a nice chat with a coworker who works from home in Colorado about diet and exercise. I just mentioned that I have the Lap-Band, but it's not really working for me right now, so if I want the results, I have to do it myself. I don't know why, but just saying it this way, admitting that my Lap-Band is not helping me at all right now, just sent me on a roller coaster of emotions:

I'm very proud of myself for taking it into my own hands and eating better and exercising every single day. It's getting easier not to see it as a "diet" but as something I can live with.

I'm angry. I'm so angry that I had surgery and took a huge step to improve my health, and it's not working. IT'S NOT WORKING. Yes, yes, you have to work "with" your band, you still have to make healthy choices, yadda yadda yadda. Honestly, I didn't get to be this big by eating fast food and junk food and drinking soda all the time. It's because I just ate HUGE amounts of "regular" food. I NEED the portion control. If I don't feel full after a meal, I will absolutely be picking and snacking between meals. My body just doesn't understand that just because I'm not "full" doesn't mean that I have to keep eating until I am. Yes, it's also mental. But I want to be full off less food. If I could do this by myself, I wouldn't have gotten the Lap-Band. I'm also mad at myself that I'm stuck in a program that I'm starting to think is more at home with bypass than the Lap-Band. It's easy to just tell bypass patients that after their surgery, it really is about what you eat. With the Lap-Band though, it takes FILLS to get to the same state that a bypass patient is in! SO GIVE ME MY DAMN FILLS!

I'm scared. I'm scared shitless that my Lap-Band will never work. It happens. I've seen a few people on LBT that it just never works for them and they end up having RNY instead. I don't want to be one of those people.

I'm jealous of people who the Lap-Band works for from Day 1. I know many people from LBT that never exercised and 100 pounds just came off. It's definitely not the norm, but it happens. Just in my June surgery group, a lot of people have lost 100 pounds already, or close to it. I'm 400 pounds, I should have lost weight faster than any of them.

I feel useless. I know all of these things that I'm supposed to have to do with my Lap-Band: eat slowly, chew chew chew, eat protein first in case you get full before you get to the rest of the food, take a multi-vitamin because you aren't getting all the nutrients from your small amount of food. I don't need to do any of those. I haven't had a PB since about the first month of my surgery. Is it weird that now I wish I would have one, just to know my band is working?

In other news, the gym was strange tonight. I was on the bike and I did a little harder routine on the bike (one of the programmed ones, where it changes the resistance at certain points) and I also noticed I was going a lot faster without realizing it! I normally go about 50 RPM, today was anywhere between 60-70, and the 70 was closer to the end when I was sore! Two girls came in and took both of the ellipticals, so I couldn't do that tonight. My feet were really sore from my shoes, so I knew I couldn't go another 5 minutes on the bike. Instead, I cranked the resistance up a few more notches and went all out for a full minute. I was really proud of myself.

When I went back to the locker room and sat down, after a few minutes, I didn't even feel like I worked out. No soreness, I wasn't waddling like most nights, and I wasn't sweating as bad. The elliptical really makes me work harder than I realized and it makes me feel like I actually accomplished something.

I was a little perturbed about the elliptical when I got home, so I did a mile of Walk Away The Pounds while my dinner was in the oven. Yep! I earned two stickers in one day :)

Tomorrow is my weigh-in day...wish me luck!