4 YEAR SURGIVERSARY

I'm a little behind, but I wanted to get my labs back in case there was something I wanted to reference, but happy to say my labs are perfect!  I have absolutely no issues and would do it again in a second. I can still only eat about 4 oz of dense protein and I still get the foamies when I overeat or in my case eat bread or pasta. Having said that, I would like to share something I learned this year.  I started lifting weights in October again to get more muscle mass.  Within a couple months I noticed my body shape changing and my clothes fitting tighter around my quads and what not.  I got on the scale which I rarely do anymore and I was up 10 lbs.  Now I know that this is from building muscle, but in my head I immediatly started beating myself up.  Then for the next couple of months I tried to frantically drop the weight before my yearly check up with my surgeon.  I started really going down a bad path with negative thoughts.  Tell me if this sounds familiar.  I would think;  your pants are tight, your pathetic....why did you have a handful of almonds, where is your willpower..... and those are the nicer thoughts.  I started seeing fat that really wasn't there, telling myself my blood work was going to be terrible because, well, because everything else I felt was bad, so I guess I thought that would be too.  I even bit my husbands head off the morning of my appointment because I was so stressed out.  My surgeon reassured me that this type of weight gain was OK and I'm in great shape.  What is so shocking to me about this whole story is how fast and easy it was to start hating myself again.  I totally had to rein in those thoughts and everytime one crept in, to turn it positive and tell myself to knock it off.

So the moral of the story is, after four years, your mind will still mess with you.  You have to take what you have learned and re-apply it sometimes.  And remind yourself how far you have come and what a great job you are doing.  Best of Luck to Everyone and I hope my little story helps anyone beating themselves up in their head.  Just stay the course and it will work out.

Very inspirational. Thanks for the positiie update.

Good for you for working out more and learning a great lesson.  Nobody said it would be easy...most just say it's worth it ;)

Hey VeraG !

Congrats on 4 !!!

Great update !

frisco

Does it sound familar?  Heck, it's the conversation in my head from like 3 hours ago LOL.

Thanks for sharing.

VeraG, so happy to see your post this morning.  I agree, the story never really ends and we have to be vigilant.  I love that you put on 10 pounds of muscle, that's quite an achievement for most women.  If you ever get tired of it, pass some over my way.  :)  I hope you stop here more often, I miss the older guard.  Take care.

Congratulations on 4 years!

I gained about 12 pounds of muscle from heavy lifting and keeping up with cardio. It really messed with me and I kept going down that path of negativity and ended up with real regain.

Excellent insight on your part and it's fantastic that your surgeon was supportive of your positive weight gain.

Thanks for posting, Vera!  I love reading about veteran's and how they're doing this far out :-)  I started an intense exercise program 5 weeks ago and have already noticed that my thighs (quads specifically) have increased in size as my pants are tighter in the legs.  Hmmmm - I'm praying that the body fat calculations go my way today so that I don't fall into the trap of beating myself up too.  

Glad to hear you're doing so well 

The negative talk in my head is just a "moment" off.  Thank you for posting and reminding!!

Congratulations on 4 years! You look great and so fit! I'm at a year and totally relate to the mind messing with you, everyday is a challenge and a constant telling myself I can do this and maintain. Thank you for your post and encouragement!