ANewDayforRose

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I've been reading the FlyLady and I read Body Clutter this week.  What I'm taking away from all ot it was a great phrase that the we get paralyzed by perfection.  It really hit home!  Yes my house can get to be a mess and then it just seems so overwhelming that I do nothing.  This 15 minute rule is a godsend though.  And since doing that I've seen that mentality of being paralyzed by perfection in other areas of my life too - that dread and hesitation to start a project at work for example.  But what about my diet, and with exercise?  Yes, I think so.  

Work has been extremely busy still.   What has made it bearable has been knowing that I can do that 15 minutes of cleaning when I get home!  That is so hysterical, but true!  I looked forward to coming home and working 15 minutes on my garage.  The first couple of days last week I did 15 minutes of stretching exercises as well, but that fell by the wayside mid week.  I decided that I still did well - that 15 minutes of cleaning each day was 15 minutes of movement that I wouldn't otherwise have had in my day.  

I may mow the lawn today if it doesn't rain before 9 a.m. and if my back is in good shape.  Yesterday I got up and made a to-do list and was out the door at 8:10 a.m.  I went ot Walmart to buy paint so I could paint the diningroom (same color, just to freshen it up).  But my back went into spasm walking around Walmart.  It hasn't done that in YEARS I don't think.  It was uncomfortable.  I got back in the car and cried. I cried because I just felt so helpless with my back. (And my pity party lasted the day and affected my eating).  My back has been bothering me all week but I've been trying to keep it stretched out.  So I came home and did the stretching and we fine enough to go grocery shopping.  It acted up a little, but not too bad.  

Anyway, this week will be more flylady behavior, hopefully I can add a little more movement into my day, and of course watching what I eat.  I'm sure this week at work will be hectic again.  I'm hoping that the following week will be better (the deadlines will have come and gone by then). 

I read a post from a band sib of mine - we were banded on the same day.  She says she's giving up.  She's lost 17 pounds.  I know her post came out of frustration, pain, sleep deprivation, but it does make me think about my own journey with the band.  Why did we both think this would be easier?  We were both on the boards many many months prior to getting the band.  There is a mentality...is it the board?  Is it being caught up in the hope of success?  I don't know...but there was a mentality that those with problems brought it on themselves - eating wrong foods, not exercising, etc.  I know I bought into it.  Then I became one of them!  And my bandsib too I think.  The band is not what I expected.  The surgeon's office may have been right to strongly discourage it.  When you are 145 pounds overweight, losing 75 (as predicted by the surgeon) seems great.  But that's spread out over 2 years time I think.  So if we go by that calculation...I'm ahead of the game!  But when you are the bandster...you want, you had hoped for, you expect that the weight is going to come off consistently.  Even if it were 1 pound a week, it's something to count on.  But it hasn't been that way for me.  And apparently not my bandsib either.  I'm not anti-band.  I haven't given up on my band and won't.  I'm adjusting to life with the band.  Honestly I've had no problems other than slow weight loss.  I've never puked!  I've never slimed!  I have felt food go through the band a couple times and that was a little painful...but not excruciating.  

So my expectations have had to change.  My mindset has had to change.  For me, life with the band is going to be like being on a diet, only I get the added support from the band.  The band won't allow me to eat 4 or 6 slices of pizza in 10 minutes.  I can however, eat the wrong foods slowing throughout the day and not lose weight, or god forbid gain.  

I lost 3 pounds since my fill 2 weeks ago - but it all came in the first few days, then I went back to fluctuating weights, up 3, down 2, up one, etc.  So that doesn't feel successful.  But I have had to remind myself that it's only been 2 weeks, and I have had some eating faux pas since then - remember the weekend and the ice cream and chips??   Remember that box of cheeze-its you bought and managed to finish in 3 days?  Oh yeah.  

My error in thinking about the band was that this wouldn't be a diet.  It is.  That was my error.  It's a diet in the sense that I have to be mindful of the amount of calories I take in and burn off.  It is not a diet in the sense that I don't have the hours of hunger that I have had on diets.  It's not a diet in the sense that I NEED to learn a new way of eating and coping.  But in order to lose with the band, I have to diet - i.e. count what goes in and what gets burned off.  End of story.

Okay....well I never did post my 4 month weight loss - I'm sticking with 25 down even though my weight has been fluctuating this week.  So I've been thinking of setting a goal for June - specifically for June 28, 5 months out.  Can I be in the 250s by then?  That would be an 'official' 6 lb loss in the next 28 days.  Can I do that?  I should be able to, but will I?  I havent' gotten my fly lady body clutter book yet, but her website does talk about 15 minutes of loving movement a day for your body.  Why am I so resistant to that idea?  I think I'm afraid of failing.  Okay....this is it....I commit to moving my body lovingly for 15 minutes a day, each day from today through June.  Now I have to figure out what I'm going to do.  It's fine to say this, but I actually have to back it up wiht a plan.

Work the last couple of days has been crazy busy and not the good kind of busy, but the 'I could work 24 hours straight and not catch up' busy.  It's depressing and I think that my life is being wasted by working.  There is no time to feel good about what you've accomplished, just one more thing for me to do, and why isn't this done yet, etc.  I get depressed when I get that kind of busy.  And that makes it hard to focus on me when I get home from work.  Then I long for an interent business where I could stay home all the time.  :)  I do think I'm going to have schedule a day off for myself soon though. 

There really has been a shift in my mentality over the last few days.  How many times in my life have I been so gung-ho about a diet/exercise plan and worked so hard and diligently.  I would lose 30, 40, 60 pounds at a time....only to fail.  Over and over and over.  A few years ago I gave up dieting, gave up trying.  Since the band I've really struggled with allowing myself to 'diet and exercise' again.  Focused attention is really what it is, but because of my past failures I've been really resistant to it.  But something has shifted in my mentality this past week and I'm feeling okay with it again.  This really was the 'switch' I was looking for.  I can 'diet and exercise' again and this time I have the added support of the band.  

The other part of the 'switch' was to own my band.  My band.  I was so afraid of doing it wrong in the beginning, hurting the band, fear of having horrible exeriences   with the band, that I was looking to everyone for the answers.  The surgeon's office told me one thing (which I knew was not right for me...or anyone?) and the boards would say another.  The shift for me this past week was that I KNOW how to lose weight.  I know how my body works.   Own the band, and let it work for you, let it work with your plan.  I love it!  I love that I've come to this realization.

I just ate lunch and I feel too full.  I had a serving of gardenburger meatballs and sauce and some black olives.  I REALLY wanted to have some sf pudding, but there is just no room.  In fact, I don't like how full I feel right now.  Not nauseaus, but I do feel thanksgiving-full.  Shall I shout Hallelujah!  If I didn't feel so uncomfortable I would.  I ate about 45 minutes ago....and feeling quite full still.  So I think I have restriction - that elusive 'restriction'.    The next step will be to slow down the eating even more so that my brain says I'm full before my stomach does.  Obviously this was too much to eat at one sitting. 

Today while responding to a post I wrote "With my experinece, even though I can't eat a lot of food fast, I can eat a lot slow!  You can eat all day long if you want.  So there is a certain amount of mental discipline that is needed with the band to be more successful than just that 50% of the weight you are expected to lose." ~  after I wrote that I thought 'My god that's it!'  Hahaha.  Suddenly I think I had my a-ha moment, the moment when my life with the band became clear to me (or at least clearer).   The band is not going to make me stop eating.  It does prevent me from shoveling food in quickly.  There IS a certain amount of mental discipline needed to succeed.   I DO think that this is harder (or even almost impossible) to do when you are battling hunger.  With the band, there is less hunger.  But I have a BAAADD habit of grazing after dinner.  Tonight my grazing was to eat 2 sf popsicles and then I ate a skinny cow ice cream sandwich (was not even very appealing).  I ate these over 2 hours time.  I wasn't hungry.  It was grazing.  And it was after dinner grazing.  I need to change the behavior.  My goal has to be "I want to change my lifestyle" not "I want to lose weight".  

I think I MAY have to do something else besides watch TV after dinner.  Egads....

Had my fill under fluoro Tuesday.  It's always a bit of a drama for me....I'm really seeing that it is me.  It was a long morning without coffee or food,  I had to wait an hour in the radiology department at the hospital while people with trauma were also coming in and out with emergent needs.  When the actual fluoro came to happen, my surgeon kept calling me ma'am and that really bothered me because I realized if he did look at my chart, he looked at what needed to be done, but not my name.  I got a little nervous under all the radiology equipment.  And so many people came into the room.  The radiology tech, the surgeon, I think a radiologist and two others - I assume they were residents since it is a teaching hospital.  I was watching the screen but didn't feel comfortable asking questions and had no idea what I was looking at.  I kept seeing this big fluffy thing and wanted to ask if that was my stomach but was afraid they would tell me it was a tumor.  I'm such a freak.    I finally just looked away.  I felt no different with the fill.  But they couldn't have missed especially if a radiologist was in the room, he would have noticed.  The surgeon said he put in 4 cc's bringing me up to 9 cc's in a 12 cc band.  Huh?  I thought I had a 10cc band?  I didn't know there was a 12 cc band.  I'm just confused at this point and want to get the hell out of there.  So he says to stay on clears for 24 hours and I'm outta there.  

I was nervous the rest of the day  but it was all fine.  Liquids went down with no problem at all.  My throat felt 'tight' a few times but I get that when I'm anxious so I'm not sure if it was the fill or anxiety.  Yesterday afternoon I had a sf pudding cup and then at dinner I had some pureed chili and then had unpureed chili.  No problem.  Then about 8 p.m. I had a couple of wasa crispbreads with margarine - again, no problem.  And....I might add...no sensation that I was done.  Which leads me to ponder, what is 'restriction'?  If I have 9 cc's in my band I have restriction!  So what am I thinking restriction is?

After the surgery I got the sensation of 'fullness'.  Not like before the surgery, but there was definately a sensation to stop, but that went away before my first fill.  So I'm wondering if that was just swelling from the surgery?  Since the surgery (and really before the surgery) I really have changed the way I eat.  I do eat very slowly and I chew thoroughly.  Maybe what I need to go back to is timing my meals and stopping at that 30 minute mark.   'Dinner' has been what is giving me trouble.  If I'm eating in front of the TV I can't remember when dinner started and I know dinner has extended a couple hours sometimes.  A little here, a little there.  The band isn't going to prevent that.  

Today I will pay attention to how long I go before I get hungry.  That's what I really wanted from the band - to keep that hunger at bey.  Today I will time my dinner.

So my weight is finally dropping again.  I actually dropped an 'official' pound on Monday after 5 days of WW.  It was that one pound plus the couple I was up.  And then 24 hours on clears certainly dropped it more.  I'll start tracking weight loss monthly from now now.  So May 28 will be 4 months and that will be my official 4 month loss.  Maybe I'll make it to 30?  Well definately more than 25. 

I feel like my body is falling apart.  My back was aching in my sleep last night, I kept turning over and it kept waking me up.  I finally got up and took some children's motrin (and milk) and back to bed, but I woke up in back distress.  Not a 10, but a 7 or 8.   Then to add insult to injury, or more pain to injury, when I pulled myself out of bed, I moved my shoulder just right to hit the sore spot and shooting pain went through my body.  Oh...yeah...I forgot my shoulder has been bothering me but only when I move it in one particular position.  I was able to stretch out my back, but I feel lethargic today.  I don't think I'll mow the lawn today.  I don't think I'll even get dressed today.

So I've been counting WW points.  Yesterday I went over.  I don't know if I didn't plan my meals well or what, but by 8:30 I had only a couple points left and I was starving.  I ate those 2 or 3 points and a few more.  I think I can honestly say that my restriction level could be better.   My fill under fluoro is Tuesday.  I'm nervous at all the possibilities.  The best case scenerio is that everything is fine but I just need a little fill.  The worst would be that I have a flipped port or something else that would require surgery.  Oh wait....no the worst case scenerio would be that they say I don't need a fill at all, it's just that I'm a failure.  Hahaha.  Yes that WOULD be the worst case scenerio.  

I'm going to make another cup of coffee and sit in front of the TV or go take a nap, or both.

Well I've been doing very poorly this week as far as food goes.  Okay I did have PMS, but still.  I don't know why I think with the band that would be so different than before the band, but somehow it seems more shameful.  Oh well.  But the last couple of days I've been noticing that I get a little stomachache every time I eat.  What's that, I though?  I worried that it was just the volume of food I was eating, or if I was eating too much and putting pressure on the band.  Didn't know.  

Well Wed night I joined WW online for a month.  The difference between WW and thedailyplate for me really is that WW is a checkbook type of approach - this is what you have to spend for the day.  So I did that yesterday.  I ate what I normally eat during the day and ate my normal dinner.  (I struggle after dinner, and at work occasionally I've been getting a bag of cheese nips from the vending machine).  Well without these little extras I figured I would still have lots of points left over at theend of the day....no!  I was 1.5 points under.  That was a good reality check.  Historically on WW I only lost a pound or 2 a week, and obviously I've even been eating way more than WW allows...duh...

Last night after dinner (within 10 minutes) I got that stomachache/pain in my chest again, only way worse.  Then it was more than a stomachache it was pain  - a 9 on the scale?  I was scared.  Why?  That's what confused me.  I had brussels sprouts, but I've had them before with the band, and everything else I ate I usually eat.  And I THOUGHT I was chewing well.  (Just an interesting observation - this pain is VERY similar to gb attacks I used to have before I had it removed- VERY similar).  So anyway I didn't know what to do, so I laid down and soon fell asleep.  Two hours later I was awake and the pain gone.      When I was hungry later I had some milk and unjury and I got twinges from that.  Good grief.    My plan this morning is to also stay on liquids, just to give my stomach a rest.  I just drank a cup of coffee though and had no problems.

So how long do I go without updating my blog?  I'm not  focused on weight loss.  I'm letting my band do what it can.  I guess the good thing is that I'm finally noticing that it IS doing something.  Yes I can eat crap and it feels like I can eat a lot of crap, but I realized that it is less than I used to be able to eat.  And I have not really gained.  Again, a sign that the band is doing something.  Perhaps I'm putting too much focus on this fill under fluoro coming up.  It's next week - 5/20 - is that Tues?  

My new computer came yesterday - a laptop.  I'm sitting in the sunroom watching the birds while typing this.  This is what I wanted!  And my yard is FINALLY starting to look good.  I've been in this house almost 7 years and I've been working on adding flower beds ever since.  Each year I've been so disappointed at how it looks.  But last week I looked from one side of the yard to the other and suddenly thought 'that looks pretty'.  So I'm hoping that each month looks nice.  In the fall I'll plant  some bulbs and see if I can get a few more blooms during May/June.  

Back to my weight loss - I think part of the reason why I've been so discouraged with my stalled loss is that  other people also had expectations for my weight loss!  So I feel that pressure, I feel that suprise or disappointment, and fear that I'm being judged when I say that I have lost 22 pounds, which is what I've been saying for the last few weeks.  Only my office mate (who is so freaking judgmental) has said 'so your weight  loss has really stalled'.  Why yes, yes it has.  How much do I have to explain?  This is not RNY, it's not going to be a rapid weight loss in the beginning.  Unfortunately, it's not even a steady weight loss because of the fills and my center has been doing bands for about a year and they are not sure of themselves with fills - therefore the fluoro next week.  Hopefully that gets this going again.  In the meantime, I have not been able to stuff myself the way I did before the band.  I guess we can and should measure that as success.  And I am down around 20 pounds since the surgery - again, that is a success.  So I'm just in a holding pattern until next week.  Then I will know if this stalled weight loss is because I'm just a failure at the band, or if part of this is about the restriction level.