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 So a year out and I weigh 193lbs. I'm under 200 and enough so that if I stay here forever I'll probably never see it again as long as eat the way I've been eating. And when people ask me these days what my goal weight is I tell them, but always with the caveat that "Well, I'm pretty much done." What I mean by that is that I am done caring what I weigh as long as I stay here abouts. It's extremely liberating to live this way. This daily weigher has stopped getting on the scale but once a week. 

Why!? You'd say. Why don't you cut back, exercises like a maniac, isn't the goal to get to goal. Nope. Don't care, not one freaking iota about getting to goal weight. And here's why. 

I am a Weight loss surgery success. The Duodenal switch Excess Weight loss average is 80-90 percent. I have lost that. I have done it in a year. I used to weigh 453lbs I now weigh 193. I don't shop in plus sizes. I wear Medium tops. I can run a mile. I'm normal. And I'm normal sized. People I know have referred to me as "skinny," what?!?


I think it's a disturbing trend across the boards that people focus too much on being perfect and not enough on being a success. Even your surgeon is not going to guarantee you will get to goal weight or a normal BMI and lots of them will probably use non-committed language regarding just how low you do get. Mostly THEY want to see you lose about average excess weight loss. And if you are a super heavyweight sometimes a goal to lose 300lbs is simply unrealistic. But hey when you weigh 600lbs you SHOULD do a happy dance of joy to be down to 250, Right!??!?

I'm not going to beat myself up, I'm not going to dwell on my BMI, I'm not going to try to force my body to do something, if it happens past this point it happens. I am done. I am a SUCCESS. I don't need to be perfect. I don't need to be a martyr. I'm already a success. I'm happy being a success. 

Now, I'm not even saying you shouldn't try to get to your goal, or that I won't ever reach mine, or that it's not good to have one. But obsessing over it is bad. Thinking that you are a failure after LOSING 180+lbs IS SUPER BAD. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Revel in how you are a success TODAY. Nothing good comes from calling yourself a failure. Ever.  

 Today I am 28. Last year I got the best belated birthday present I have ever gotten, I was switched (April 21, 2009). 

I woke up this morning at 209 (weighed myself twice for verification purposes, you know you need to be statistically accurate ^_^) and did a little dance. It is very likely that I could be under 200lbs by my surgery anniversary. Now that's not my goal by far. But I have told everyone I know that if I could live my life under 200lbs I would consider myself and my surgery a complete and total success. I have dropped from a size 38 to a size 18 in pants. Because I am disproportionately bigger on bottom, I can wear a 10/12 on top. I tried on a swim suit for the first time in my life in a regular store, hell this is the first time in YEARS that I have tried on a swimsuit in ANY store. And it was cute and while my post obesity body and flappy skin and foldy knees leave quite a bit to be desired I sat there and looked at myself and thought...you know this right here...Is NOT horrible. I mean it's not IDEAL if it were ideal I'd look like a victoria secret super model, lol. But it's not horrible. It's acceptable. And it fits, and I could wear it. I could wear a cute, age appropriate swim suit, from Old Navy. I could theoretically shop many different stores to find a swimsuit I love. I don't have to order some thick strapped corset built in neon 1970s couch print skirted abomination from an online specialty store. It was great, it was gratifying, it made me feel normal.

So on my 28th birthday for the first time in my life, I feel normal. Like everyone else. Overweight like everyone else, able to shop like everyone else, treated like everyone else. People see me now, even though there is less of me to see. It's a great feeling and it's a great birthday gift. 

I <3 my DS. 

So I've lost about a normal sized 5'3" -5'4" person's worth of weight since my surgery. 131lbs. It's kind of staggering to think that that has all come off in only eight months. It's wonderous to think that if I could lose 10lbs a month for the next eight months I could be at goal in 16 months. Goal. I could potentially be someone this summer who has lost TWO HUNDRED PLUS pounds in a little over a year. A whole obese person worth of weight.

It's important for me to make these distinctions as I go. When I lost "two first graders" worth of weight and could fit my own first grader into my pre-op pants with me. When I had lost 100 lbs. When I had lost more than I had left to lose. These are important because coming to terms with the way I am changing physically is hard. Not hard like emotionally hard but conceptually hard, hard to recognize the change, hard to realize what has taken place.

I mean I'm not an idiot, my clothing size has gotten smaller, my computer chair appears to have gotten bigger, I take up less space, can hop up on the arm of the couch to hang up decorations, I can fit in the tub, I can get up and down off the floor and take the stairs. I KNOW I am changing. But you know it's been so quick, but also so long since I was 453lbs. That's practically a lifetime ago. I don't even remember EXACTLY what it felt like to move around being that big. I lived my life to the best of my ability and tried not to dwell on things I couldn't do. It's not like I made lists of ways in which life sucked at 453lbs. Especially considering I was one of the lucky few who aside from being fat, was perfectly healthy (yet).

I vacillitate between feeling like I've done great, so well, lost so much, look so normal, to feeling like 84lbs is still a lot to lose, that I'll never make it and that I'm still just a fat chick. I mean I just hit 249 this morning, and the last time I lost any weight was the fast slide to 250 and then stopped for a week. And it was only a week. The week before my period to be quite blunt. And yet it felt like FORRRREVER. It felt like every day I stepped on that scale and wanted to put it through a wall when I saw 253, or worse yet 258 at the end of the day. But it was JUST a week. Seven measly days. And it feels utterly ridiculous to have made such a big honkin' deal over it. 

The numbers are weird, they don't make proper sense, there's nothing to compare them to, everyone loses weight at a different pace, or has less or more to lose, some people have lost 111 pounds and are nearly to goal, others have goals set somewhere in the 300s because they are currently 600 pounds or more it's all so personal and individual. I have Estimated weight loss percentage, and I'm meeting those goals, but it's still not enough for my brain. It's not enough to help quantify and calculate properly the CHANGE relative the time it has taken. I don't know if the numbers are ever going to adequately tell the story.

To clothes I never thought I would.

Just a month ago size 20 pants were too tight at the knee and calf. Cutting in, feeling like sausage casings on my legs. Some I could not pull up past my thighs. On the pairs I could pull up, they'd fasten at the waist just fine, but yeah too tight for wearing, I had to peel them off my legs.

One pair in particular, fitted black boot cut slacks from old navy (I don't know if you know what boot cut means when you have big old giant legs, it means "cuts off your circulation at the knee" is what it means) did not fit as of A WEE K AND A HALF AGO. And with an 11 day run of gaining three lbs and no downward trend in my weight I was beginning to think I'd never fit in them.

Well guess who is wearing them now. I am wearing SLACKS. Black, boot cut, size 20 slacks. And they fit like they were made for me. I can not believe that these pants I stopped pulling on my body because they would not go any further than the tops of my knees now go all the way up, fit comfortably and button. HOW CRAZY IS THAT?!?! Super crazy.

Add to that waking up and having the scale tell me 268 twice (I get on twice for super!accuracy) and well, I just can't believe it. I'm 18lbs from being the LIE weight I gave to the DOL for my driver's license WHEN I WAS 16. That's right I lied and told them my weight was 250 when I was 16 because I was over that weight already.

Each day is just amazing and worth it.

Oh man, I really need to get a picture of my stomach as it is right now for posterity. When I first showed it to my husband he was ready to bundle me out the door to the emergency room. I had to assure him that the surgeon already had seen it and said it was all subcutaneous and as long as it wasn't tender or didn't hurt that it was nothing to worry about. And boy is it alarming to look at though.

The farthest out most pendulous part of my stomach above my bellybutton is DARK ANGRY PURPLE. There's a bit of purple bruising arond the two incisions in my middle abdomen, but it's slowly turning a little yellow. But man, it is some sight. I think I'd like to have pictures of it just because it's like war wounds. Oddly enough those two incisions and the whole area where it's bruised the worst, hurt the least. Really the smaller incisions by my sides hurt the most. "Hurt" being the best term to describe the kind of meh, aching that I have, but it's just not really that bad in general.

And it is stupid. It's beyond stupid. And I should probably slide the scale as far under the bed with my foot as I can possibly get it so that getting it out with abdominal pain is an issue.

Because I keep weighing myself and, nothing. Drinking water, taking supplements, I'm practically on a starvation diet, and nothing.

AND I KNOW BETTER. Because I'm bloaty from surgery, and my body is trying to stay healthy and heal and not worrying about dropping weight. But I still can't help but sit here and think, but so and so and that person lost weight right after surgery!

And I think it's worse because I feel relatively good. I posted from my cell phone the day of my surgery. I'm hopping up out of bed no problem. I am on track today for taking all my supplements and am raring to start protein next week. I am starting to slowly feel like nothing changed. Like maybe they just cut into me and left everything like it was supposed to be.

AND I KNOW BETTER. I just need to mellow out and let it handle itself like I know it will.

10 day liquid pre-op diet on Easter...nuff said.

T_T

I have a wedding/engagement ring, and a ring my husband got me for mother's day when I was pregnant with my first child in 2003. 

I haven't been able to wear either of these rings for over two years. Since I've been on my high protein diet for pre-op I've been able to put them on.

Also, durin my latest prenancy (I had the baby December 30th, 2008)  I went from 430 to 407 pounds, totally healthy, And so my pre-prenancy jeans, the ones I was wearing at 430lbs were falling off of me a bit during my pregnancy were literally around my ankles three months after having the baby so I went and got new jeans which are FOUR SIZES smaller. 

My husband said "Four sizes is that all?"
To which I lamented aloud I could not punch him in the nads through the phone. 

(He clarified of course that what he meant was it seemed like since my previous pants were so big that it would have been more sizes since you know he has no idea about women's sizes) 

I live on island. I have to go in at least twice a week for the next four weeks due to a combination of baby/kid appointments and appointments for all my pre-op bruhaha.

At first my heart fell a little when I was handed the list of stuff I needed to schedule. I even gave it overnight before I started calling because it was just so daunting. Two days later, everything is scheduled, I know exactly how much it all is going to cost, and will be able to get Cashier's checks from L (the woman who is paying for my surgery) to pay for it all.

Ura at Dr. Srikanth's office said if I can get her the checks for his and his assitant's fees I can schedule my surgery for late April early May. :D Personally I'm hoping to push for April 16th -ish so I don't have to redo a few of my labs.

Also the scale I bought at Wal-mart that weighed up to 400 lbs was a dud. Not that it doesn't work in general, the brand is probably good, just the one I had the bad luck to grab was not working. I guess it doesn't matter, if they don't weight me at any of my tests on Monday I can run to Srikanth's office and weigh myself there!

So yeah, tests ALL scheduled, Money all figured out, Possible surgery date within the week!

Excited!