Just Going To Pretend...

...that my dinner tonight just didn't happen.

I was doing so good, I avoided ALL the treats and temptations at work, came home...

...

Tomorrow is a new day. I know I can't keep doing it all the time, but dwelling on it doesn't make it better either. At least my stomach feels god-awful enough that I won't be doing that again for a long time.

DH is gonna kill me. And it's my own damn fault that the scale hasn't moved in a few days, but on the other hand, I've still been eating so little, even with my slip-ups, that I'm not sure why it hasn't went down any further. I wish I knew exactly how many calories I was eating the first few days after my fill so I knew what it takes to lose.

Yesterday = Fail

Yesterday was a roller coaster of good and bad. I had the last piece of breakfast pizza for breakfast. Then I was doing good at work - I drank about 32 oz of Crystal Light by the middle of the day, I actually got all my liquids in yesterday for the first time in a week.

When I first came in the office, there was a cookie on my desk with the company logo printed on the frosting--Christmas present. At first I put it in my drawer and didn't know what to do with it. By noon, I ate it. I don't know why, I wasn't really hungry. I need to get over the 'if it's there, I'll eat it' mentality.

I wasn't hungry again until around 2 (I usually eat at 1), so I ate a tiny little chicken cutlet that I took home with me from Christmas. I brought a half cup of hamburger soup with me as well, but the chicken filled me up and I didn't touch it. I was hungry by 4 or 4:30ish. I had a pudding cup with me, and still had the soup, but I decided to just wait until I got home to eat dinner instead of snacking. Good for me. I even avoided the 4 boxes of chocolates and box of butter cookies that my coworker brought in.

I got home around 6 and I was starving by then. While DH was getting dinner ready, I snacked on corn chips. Sigh. I could have waited, but the corn chips were there and I love corn chips, so I ate them.

Dinner was leftover turkey (that we also took home from Christmas) mixed with stuffing. I ate my little bowl of the mixture, maybe 1 cup or little less. About 10 minutes later, I noticed I wasn't full. Now, I've already realized this is a problem - I need to learn the difference between "not full" and "hungry" because I might not be stuffed, but that doesn't mean I should keep eating until I am. So I realized that the stuffing mixture was so moist that it probably went right through the band. I realized it, and told DH what was happening too. Of course, he felt bad because he's trying really hard to make food for me that works with the band, so he thought he did something wrong, when really, I thought the turkey would have still filled the pouch and at least slowed down the stuffing, so it wasn't his fault that it didn't work that way either. So when I took my bowl back out to the kitchen, I took a few hearty forkfuls from the pan and ate it. I went back to the pan 2 more time during the next hour or two before I finally put the leftovers in the fridge. I can't even guess how much I ended up eating that way. And it all just went right through, during all of that I never got a full feeling.

I was tempted to have some pudding or ice cream all last night after dinner but I didn't, so at least I ended the day on a kinda good note.

It just made me feel like this is what I'm destined to do, make good choices some of the time and just completely sabotage my efforts the rest of the time. I'm trying much harder today, and I'm determined. I joined the Valentine's Day Challenge on LBT and my goal is to get down to 375 by Valentine's, which is another 18 pounds for me to lose by then. That's about 3 pounds a week, and I think it's manageable if I just stick to it.

So far today I had half of a Jimmy Dean light sandwich - 260 calories whole, so half is about 130 calories. There are so many sweets and snacks around me at work but I have the willpower. I brought chicken again for lunch, still have the half cup of soup if I need it, and still have a pudding cup.

I CAN DO THIS!

HOW COULD I FORGET?!

I totally forgot to post yesterday after I weighed myself! And it's great news!

Since Monday, I had lost 7 pounds as of yesterday. 7 pounds in 3 days! It's about time! Not only that, but I'm 1 pound away from 50 lost, AND I finally met my first goal, which was to get under 400 lbs! I'm now 395 lbs. I believe getting to the 300s is called "Threedom!" I'm so happy and I can't believe I forgot to post about it! Losing that much just makes me want to keep going, which is the sort of thinking I need, actually losing the weight never really motivated me to keep going during my journey, so I'm glad it's kicking in now.

Christmas Under Control!

I'm very very proud of myself for how I handled all the Christmas festivities today.

Breakfast: DH and I started a tradition 3 years ago where we make cook breakfast together, always breakfast pizza and some sort of potato. And we only have breakfast pizza ONCE a year, so we really savor it. This year DH made homemade hashbrowns with it. I had one piece of pizza and a few bites of hashbrowns with cheese.

Christmas Lunch with Friend Family A: Half of a small piece of pork, one very small, thin chicken cutlet, about 4 or 5 "noodles" of rigatoni and cheese, 1 piece of broccoli, 5 or 6 potato "cubes". And that was only HALF of what I took on my plate, so I'm very very happy with myself. I put the rest on DH's plate so I wouldn't be tempted to finish it. Thankfully friend's mother is very supportive of my band and was completely understanding, so I didn't feel like I was offending her cooking by not eating much. I also had a tiny slice of cheesecake about an hour later.

Christmas Dinner with Friend Family B: A few small pieces of turkey, a little bit of mashed sweet potatoes (maybe 1/4 cup). 1 small boxed chocolate for desert.

The only problem is that I drank so very little all day. I really need to force myself to drink, I think since I'm not hungry I don't get as thirsty, either. And since I'm not as thirsty, I don't stare at the clock so much after eating, waiting for my hour to be up to drink. I just kinda forget about it. It was also a problem though because Family B didn't really have anything for me to drink, and tap water wasn't offered (I don't like plain water, but I was so thirsty that I would have drank it at that point).

Overall, I think it was a successful day and shouldn't impede my weight loss at all!

Keep On Truckin'

Yesterday wasn't bad, just a little tiny bit of heartburn last night but that was it, I was fine the rest of the day. I could tell that I'm getting a little weak from not getting enough protein, so I requested hamburger soup for dinner from DH, since I was drinking so slowly that I still couldn't have finished a whole shake if I tried. My schedule was a little screwed up so here is what I ate:

Breakfast 9AM - a few sips of protein shake (not even 1/4 cup if I had to guess)
Lunch 12PM - 2 or 3 small bites of chicken salad and 1/2 cup of carrot soup (and I was FULL!)
Snack - 1 SF Dulce de Leche pudding cup
Dinner 9PM or so - 3 or 4 bites of chicken salad about a half hour before dinner since I was starving by then; then hamburger soup (ground hamburger and lots of veggies), I didn't measure it but it was less than a cup. I figured it was a good transition into mushies.

Today I started full mushies and I'm a little nervous. I made 2 eggs (Egg Beaters) with a tiny bit of ham and cheese. It looked like a lot of food, maybe 1 cup when cooked (2 eggs of Egg Beaters is 1/2 cup so I didn't expect it to expand so much). I ate all of it with basically no problems, and that makes me scared because of how little soup I could eat just yesterday. I'm also having fewer problems with liquids, even just yesterday I had to take small sips and wait between each sip. Now I find myself taking larger drinks and it's fine. I REALLY want this restriction, I'll be devastated if it doesn't last. Of course I'll still watch my portions, but I really got my hopes up this time with how nice my liquid phase was. And this was the first time that I wasn't rushing rushing to get to mushies, sure, I wanted to eat everything I couldn't have, but I wasn't starving for food, I was doing just fine on liquids.

I think I'm going to weigh myself before I take a shower in a bit here, even though I have food and water in my stomach, I should have lost -something- considering how few calories I took in the last 3 days.

Tomorrow should be interesting, I have two Christmas dinners I'm going to. Thankfully the food isn't great at either family's house (I know it sounds bad, but that means I won't be tempted to go overboard). I'm also making 1 dozen cookies right now because 1) my husband wanted to bake for Christmas, and 2) these are caramel-filled chocolate chip pre-formed cookies that we found in the store, the LAST package, so we wanted to try them. And I'll have a cookie when they're ready, but I have no plans to sit down and eat half of them today like I would have in the past.

Ow...Heartburn...

I'm doing pretty well food-wise since my fill yesterday, but I've had heartburn all day today since I woke up. It goes away when I'm eating. I'm a little concerned, because it either means that I'm too tight, or it can indicate band slippage. I'm torn, because on one hand, I WANT this restriction. On the other hand, I can't handle it if this heartburn continues, it was okay for the first few hours, but this is over 12 hours now and it's really getting to me. I tried calling Karen (my NP) today, as she asked me to call and check in today, but she didn't get back to me. I really don't want to get an unfill because of all the fuss I've went through to get to this point, and I'm terrified of getting an unfill and being even less restricted than before.

What I ate yesterday:
1 bowl of Lucky Charms before my fill
1 Sugar Free Dulce de Leche pudding cup
Total 1.5 cups of cream of carrot soup spread out over 2-3 hours; 1/2 cup at a time

Today:
About 1/2 cup of a protein shake attempt (chocolate protein powder, yogurt, 1/2 banana, and a little peanut butter) - wasn't too good, actually
2 bites of chicken salad VERY well chewed; I bought some today and really wanted to try it and was careful about it
1/2 cup carrot soup for lunch
3 more bites of chicken salad
I didn't measure my dinner carrot soup, but it wasn't more than 1 cup, maybe less
1 SF Dulce de Leche pudding cup

Still pretty good overall, my only real hunger is head hunger, it always drives me nuts just knowing I CAN'T have something.

I definitely didn't drink enough today, the heartburn is actually discouraging me from drinking I think.

I'll keep posting about this and let ya'll know what happens with the heartburn.

Not Very Filling Fill

I got my fill today and my husband was able to come with and got to watch them do it and see the flouro monitor and everything, I think it was very helpful for him to understand what they actually do.

I had 10cc last time, there was only 9 left in when she pulled it all out. So she put me up to 10.5, originally she went up to 11 but thought it was too tight so took a little out. I'm a little nervous because it might not be enough - she said my band was already tight before she started taking out/adding, but today was a strange day. I was off work, so I didn't wake up until after 10 AM and ate breakfast (just some cereal) around 11. My fill was around 1 PM. My concern is that I'm usually a little tight in the morning, but I usually wake up around 7:30-8, eat breakfast at 9, and then get my fill around 1 and I'm usually not tight anymore by 11 or 12. I'm afraid that my morning tightness affected my fill and that I'm really not as tight as she thinks I am. I guess I'll see how it goes, but she won't be very happy if I want another fill, since I'm at 10.5 out of 14 now and there's not much further we can go. She's still pushing me to go see a psychologist and dietitian, I just haven't had the time this week to find either one.

I'm really starting to get frustrated, my goal was to lose 150 lbs this year and I don't think I even lost 10.