Someone's Considering the Surgery

I am just finishing up compiling a series of posts into a document to give to someone that are tagged with "bariatric surgery" from the blog.

I was recently stopped by a coworker and she asked me several questions about the surgery. Apparently she's been struggling with her weight for awhile and has lost a large amount of weight on two occasions; one, she had an aneurysm on her pancreas that went undiagnosed for a long period of time, and the second time was a brain tumor, and in the course of trying to remove the tumor the doctors apparently had to break her jaw and that put her on a liquid diet.

She's apparently contemplating the surgery because she'd like to find a way to lose the weight that doesn't involve a serious medical trauma. Can't say I'd blame her.

It did put me in a bit of a bind though. See, while I put this blog up to educate others considering the surgery in addition to acting as a bit of a soundboard and public "journal" of my life, I never really wanted to have people personally associate me with the blog. A few people I trust were made aware of the blog. But coworkers? What if they become ticked at something? Read too much into something? Take something personally?

The last thing I need is someone getting all ticked over something stupid. I edit the blog heavily and pass much of it through what "offensiveness" filters I have built over time in addition to having my wife read the entries so she can alert me to potentially "bad" things. I don't advertise the blog to people.

I guess it boils down to I don't mind people close to me knowing about the blog and perfect strangers knowing about the blog. I don't know how casual aquaintences and coworkers would react to some of the information here despite all the filtering and care I put into it so I don't let them know.

So when she started asking me questions, direct questions, about the surgery and my experiences I thought that the blog would be the best resource. At the same time...I didn't know her well enough to trust her with that information.

That left two options. Reveal the blog's details and let her in on my "dirty little online secret" or go through by hand and filter the entries listed for the surgery into a word processor and try cleaning it up a little bit and printing it for her.

The first was easy. The second takes time. I should know because I did the second one.

I wish I could trust everyone with knowledge of the blog but I just don't feel that I can risk it. I can't risk someone getting bent out of shape over something stupid.

The document was formatted with 1/2 inch margins on all four sides and came out to be 68 pages long with nearly 39,000 words. Wow. And that's not including this entry.

I also noticed the gradual dropoff in entry frequency regarding the surgery. That's a good thing, I think. That's why I listed this with a tag of "milestones". It's a reflection of my healing process, and the fact that my life shifted focus gradually towards something other than a bariatric patient. It means that even though I've gone through a life changing event I'm not completely defined by it.

I'm dealing with other issues; my bouts of depression, my Asperger's, my debts and everything that I put into the blog. I occasionally stick in updates to my bariatric progress but it's simply not an everyday concern for me.

I don't think I put anything in about the Walk from Obesity that I attended. That's when I realized that this truly was becoming a footnote in my life; my wife and I pledged some money for the Walk from Obesity charity event and we walked around a nearby park on a course that was a little over a mile. And I didn't blog about it.

It was a wonderful event. It had free health screenings and some fun swag, and I won a candle as a door prize. The weather held out nicely with a cool breeze and a little sun and we got t-shirts for registering. Best of all I saw my nutritionist and surgeon along with several other doctors I'd seen around the hospital during my consults and time in the hospital. The only one I noticed that was missing was the physician's assistant that had been so helpful with so many appointments after my surgery and during my recovery time.

And I didn't blog about it.

It was...a footnote. A few fun hours one day over the weekend. We had fun. But I didn't blog about it.

I have an appointment, my six month followup, coming up with my surgeon in less than a month. Another milestone. That one I will blog about.

So much has changed. I see it in my skimming of the material as I go through and change the arrangment of the entries (such a pain...the blog wanted to present everything in reverse-chronological order. Ugh.) It's amazing to me to see how things have shifted focus from the beginning to this point, and the things I've forgotten, the little details.

So while I'm handing over to her the virtual keys to finding this blog and blowing my own cover, at the same time I'm glad I've kept the records. I see it as an amazing journey chronicling events in the life of an otherwise unremarkable and insignificant person existing on the planet. I've had comments from people that five years ago I'd never have thought I could have had an exchange with; Mur Lafferty, Paula B, even John Robison have visited this site for a brief time and some continue to drop in. They have no idea how much they made my day and what impact they've had on some stranger with a blog. I look forward to hearing from Lee as I drop in on his own blog, as well as Lorraine with her Renewal blog.

I have blogged my progress with writing stories for The Writing Show, prompting me to continue with an effort to write a draft of a novel which while I'm not tracking progress here I have been making progress on. If you're curious I'm closing in on 22,000 words with it so far...far enough to not make it worth my while to simply quit now without crossing the finish line and then trying to edit it.

All the while I'm still trying to lose weight. I'll hopefully cross a milestone soon that will prompt another worthwhile update on that front too.

All of these things came from keeping a blog about getting my gut sliced open.

Simply amazing to me.

Oh Wow...This Would Kill Healthy People

I have to admit, this sounds...compellingly...tempting to me.

Maybe I'm earning my time in the therapists chair as most sane people would probably say this is disgusting. Me...it's a huge chunk of the things that I miss. This is virtually every cakey dessert that I used to enjoy mashed into one.

Click the link. Go ahead. Take a look.

Yes, I've had bariatric surgery, and I struggle with emotional eating. I snack out on mixed nuts and now broccoli with mustard (don't ask...it's a taste I acquired back when I first was on a very low calorie diet) periodically to stave off both hungers and feeling wonky during my exercise sessions. I watch my weight as much as possible to try and make sure I keep losing weight.

This food looks great to me. It is a reminder of all the things I miss. But I can't try it. It would be a death sentence.

Okay, not a death sentence. But it would probably hurt. A lot. Or at least make me regret it.

But hey...I'm allowed to look and drool. What about you neurotypicals out there? What do you think of food like this? Click on the link and let me know!

Accuracy in Food Labeling

Here's a scary article for people that are actually trying to do the right thing in their diet.

I suppose it shouldn't be much of a surprise, though. Many government agencies are charged with a large set of duties and then find themselves understaffed and underfunded and apparently it includes the FDA. This leaves the patients in charge of the asylum, or in this case the food packagers and manufacturers are allowed to police themselves.

Essentially the article is talking about how food labels are often found to be inaccurate. Not just a few. This is saying that approximately 25% of labels are wrong. One in four!

From the article:
In testing in the past couple of years, Florida found:

• Sugar in sugar free coconut pies sold at Walmart.
• Sugar in sugar free syrup made by Walden Farms.
• More sodium than claimed in Orville Redenbacher Popcorn Cakes.
• Sugar in sugar free Hill & Valley Apple Walnut Muffins.
• Fat exceeding the labels claim in Publix whole wheat hamburger buns.
• More sugar than the labels claim in Sunsweet prune juice.

For people with diabetes or people who are post-surgery bariatric patients, the fact that sugar-free items are found to contain sugar is not exactly welcomed news. This may explain some of those "occasional" blood sugar test anomalies, though.

This is extremely disconcerting. There's the buzz I've grown accustomed to..."frankenfoods" (genetically modified foods) cause issues, frankenfoods are safer and cheaper, these oils and these additives are safe, wait, these oils will accumulate and kill you and these additives will give you arse cancer, high fructose corn syrup is safe, high fructose corn syrup will cause your genitals to fall off...blah blah.

Dieting is a matter of calories in, calories out. But wait! Eat these pills and you'll lose weight! Eat celery and you'll have NEGATIVE calories! Drink this, puree that, swallow some olive oil and the weight magically slips away! Try the Olestra and you'll see it's true!

Then there's disappointing news. I got that from reading labels. Those burgers have how many calories? And KFC has how much sodium? Holy schnikes...

Later I found articles about how much corn was really in our foods. Wonder how much corn was in a Chicken McNugget? A lot more than I thought there was. And of course how many manufacturers are benefiting from artificially inflated prices on sugar so they can profit from corn-derived additives like high fructose corn syrup.

Then there was the disconcerting. The calories on the label aren't accurate because calorimeters read the calories in the food, but the texture affects how we digest it, so we don't get all of it? That's where I discovered that if you eat 200 calories of peanuts versus 200 calories of peanut butter, you actually get closer to 200 calories from the peanut butter while some of the calories in the nuts aren't digested because...well, they don't digest as readily. For someone as tied to numbers and accuracy as I am, this was troublesome.

Now I find out that labels may be outrightly lying about what they contain.

This. Sucks.

It's hard enough for us to know what's in our food and how we should be eating. It's beginning to look more and more like the people that always came off as food extremist nuts, people who advocate eating nothing but what you dig out of your backyard garden or raise from an egg in a coop lest the evil corporations poison you without your knowledge.

Sadly it's getting easier and easier to believe them.

Driving Traffic to The Blog

I've talked to my wife on and off about the website. Once in awhile I just sort of babble out whatever's on my mind, and one I commented on was that the Google Analytics seemed to show a steep drop after I had decided to spend more time working on things like my story instead of the blog site.

I've been posting things in spurious sessions, scheduling them ahead of time and trying to keep things ahead just enough that I can dedicate some other days to focusing on exercises and story time or whatever else is going on that day and not worry about trying to keep my one-post-a-day records.

At the same time I see that my audience is something like...three people. Which is fine. I hope people who do read it enjoy it.

My thinking is kind of split on this. On one hand it would be nice to have an actual audience that follows what I'm saying...it's a wonderful bit of mental stroking that keeps the ego fluffed up. What I mean to say is that this would be validation that I have some kind of talent for expressing myself and it would validate to my own screwy mind that I somehow matter; I mean, if Glenn Beck has an audience that pays for mansions and he's an arrogant blowhard, jiminy jillickers I should be able to get some of that type of following for spewing my brain droppings, yeah?

On the other hand I'm one voice among a sea of people that are whoring themselves on the Internet for...heh...attention and validation. I'm guilty as charged.

My wife said that I tend to be too verbose and wordy, so that may be a drawback in a time of twitter tweets and sound bites. She additionally suggested that I needed to separate my blog into several blogs, one for bariatric surgery, one for technology, etc...

This goes back to the original reason I started the blog. I started this as a place to chronicle my life as I adjusted to the bariatric surgery, so people considering such a procedure could see what it was like in my case. A the same time, a blog that is so one-tracked will grow boring. How long would someone keep reading about my weight routine or eating routine when I even know that it's very repetitive and I live this routine. That would have drawn the blog to a conclusion fairly quickly and simply faded out into obscurity, unless there's some sequel where I'd either cheat the surgery or need to have it reversed (or some other complication...which can happen a couple years out...)

There's another name for that; it's a book. Or really long article. Maybe a novella. But there's no need to continue chronicling the surgery after the twelfth time I mention my workout routine or need for an adjustment to my supplements.

Instead I sprinkle just parts of me into the blog. I mention things that maybe my son would want to read someday. I mention things that are of interest to me, that show facets of my personality. I don't have anything like this for my dad and there are times where I'd have been interested in seeing what he was like at my age, not to mention that someday maybe I'll be unable to function the way I do now and this is a kind of addon to my journals.

If I did keep multiple blogs I thought it would be a pain in the buttocks to keep track of everything. Plus, as a person who follows multiple blogs, I know that there are times I look forward to a blog that I can rely on being updated periodically whereas others seem to have simply faded away...are they no longer blogging? Are they just on vacation? What's the deal here?

By mixing topics I try to keep the blog somewhat interesting while at the same time keeping content flowing. You never know what I'll comment on. One day politics, the next day it's commenting on a local fair's choice of food. Maybe the description should be tweaked a bit since I don't discuss comics as much as I thought I would but that's something I'll probably evaluate with looking back near New Year's.

I suppose this sounds like justification for doing it the way I have been. It is. I thought about these things as I started the blog but I don't really have a lot of feedback from a lot of people as to what they're looking for; the people I have heard from (and I thank you!) have generally reacted with positive comments (although people who don't like it may very well just mosey away and not bother saying anything).

Most of all I do this blog for myself. I try to use it as a forum for practicing my wordsmithing and trying to improve my voice in "written" form. Most of all I have to enjoy doing this or I would simply quit altogether...in that respect, my audience is myself. And potentially my family should the inevitable happen someday.

Yes, I admit I get a bit of a creepy kick from the thought that should I be incapacitated these posts will continue to pop into the feed once a day for a couple of weeks. It's like something from a horror story plot.

This blog is a tangent to the journal I have to keep for my surgery-mandated psychologist visits. I can't get too personal here. I work under a pseudonym, I have to obscure certain details, I can't discuss things that are way too identifying (but let's be serious...if relatives stumbled into this blog and put two and two together it's not like it would take Mr. Monk to solve the mystery of who I was). It's one more facet to my personality and a reflection of who I am.

I've come to accept that I won't get validation from doing a blog. I'm not an Internet celebrity, I don't have mad l337 skillz in programming that draws an audience the way Mark Russinovich or Aaron Ballman do. I'm not cutting edge on rumors like Perez Hilton while hobnobbing with socialites. I'm just one of the faceless fat guys trying to lose weight, and that's hardly a rare finding in America today. I'm one voice in a sea of people.

My chances of finding validation doing this is one of the few aspects of me that are slim. But there is definitely a very good chance that I will find posterity through my expression here on this blog. I suppose that's what, in the end, keeps me coming back to this keyboard working on these entries. It's for my wife, my son, and my daughter. I'm giving them something that I never had from my parents.

I'm nothing special. But this is who I was. This is part of who your dad was, and hopefully I'm not as horrible a guy as they may have thought.

The Truth About Lactic Acid

Ever hear the story that when you exercise your muscles build up lactic acid, and that causes soreness, pain, and general fatigue?

I've heard it. I know I've heard it associated with pains from exercise. "Your muscles build up lactic acid and that's what makes you feel the burn!"

Turns out it's not true.

For people that are regularly immersed in sports medicine or weight training, this we probably already well known. For those of us that are allergic to exercise the old wives tales are usually close enough to reality that we don't care enough to research it and find out the truth.

This time around the truth just sort of stumbled into my lap. Here's a story from 2006 at the New York Times that discusses how the old "lactic acid = pain" story first emerged in the 1920s and persists today, despite it being established that the lactic acid is actually fuel for the muscles.

Interesting if you didn't know about it before, eh?

Trivia: Do You Know Your Prescriptions?

I tagged this with Doctors, but it's not really related directly to doctors. It's more about the medical community. Drug companies in particular.

I talked about the book Don't Swallow Your Gum! in yesterday's blog post. One item in particular surprised...and ticked...me off.

There are various projects out there for drug companies to figure out the proper chemical makeup to create an effective molecule for treating different diseases and afflictions. The shape and composition the the molecules affects how it binds to target receptors in the body.

The book described how some of the drugs on the market are little more than sleight-of-hand tricks. When manufacturers create certain drugs, mirror image molecules are created, so if you create drug A you actually have a mixture of drug A and drug A' (the mirror image of the drug). The mirror drug is considered inert; it doesn't affect you. Drug companies don't remove it because it is cheaper to leave it in.

Apparently drug companies can remove that extra element and it is instantly considered a new drug.

Here's the part where it drove it home for me: Nexium, "The Purple Pill"? It's Prilosec with the mirror drug removed. They're the same thing, and just as effective at treating heartburn. The thing is that Prilosec is now generic because of how long it's been available.

From the book:
Lexapro is half of Celexa.
Nuvigil is half of Provigil.
Xyzal is half of Zyrtec.
Lunesta is half of Imovane.
Levaquin is half of Floxin.
Focalin is half of Ritalin.

In another case the pill's color was changed and that's it. Sarafem, used for premenstrual dysmorphic disorder, is the SAME as Prozac. The difference? Prozac has a green coating, Sarafem has a pink coating. Oh, and Sarafem is more expensive than Prozac because now Prozac is available as a generic drug.

It's hard to support the idea that these companies aren't squeezing people and taking advantage of ignorance when you discover they're doing things like this, isn't it?

Reflections on Bariatric Surgery and Eating Changes

After the surgery there was a lot of emphasis on water.

Not as much emphasis as what I'm eating, mind you, but there was more attention on drinking adequate amounts of water than before.

Like so many other things I've discovered in my research regarding weight and diet and exercise, your intake of water has some mixed messages thrown in there. I could see some concerns after a shift in my eating habits both before and after the surgery.

With regards to drinking I had to give up my favorite drink: the soft drink. The doctor was specific on this. For months before the surgery I had to give up sodas. I was a soda fiend; I could slam 1-liters of diet Pepsi like candy. I usually drank at least three a day. Notice I said diet Pepsi. I at least tried to watch calorie intake, although today there is a growing chorus of people saying that the additives in diet soda have other health effects. I guess it doesn't much matter to me anymore.

I gave those up at the beginning of the year. Apparently carbonation in the new stomach pouch is bad.

I can't drink through a straw. Air bubbles or something like that regarding the pouch.

I'm not supposed to drink for a period of time before and after a meal.

I was told to avoid alcohol. I later found people who had the surgery and do drink some alcohol. There's supposedly a growing number of post-ops becoming a alcoholics, substituting an addition to the firewater for their addiction to food.

The hard part for me is that I tend to go by the numbers. I need solid evidence and instructions to feel comfortable with things. Even when I'm supposed to be creative with something, I usually need some way to feel like I have permission to take the reigns before taking over something. This gives me problems because with the surgery there's a certain amount of individuality that figures into the equation, and that's added to what is apparently subjective information from the doctors themselves.

For example: when I had the surgery, I was warned I could only sip water. I'd be lucky if I could ever drink a half liter of water at a sitting. The one other guy who had the surgery near the same time I did would come in and talk about having to crush pills into powder and taking hours to drink an 8 oz glass of water.

He was saying this as I was finishing half a liter of water that I had started maybe twenty minutes beforehand.

Every morning now I'm taking nine different pills, uncrushed (one is split in half because it's a whopper of a calcium pill), with a 1/2 liter of water before walking out of the house in the morning. That's downing it in fifteen minutes without any discomfort.

I told some of the team overseeing me about my concerns of stretching the pouch. They kind of dismissed it as a non-issue right now; as long as I wasn't eating to discomfort habitually, as long as I was mindful of how much I ate, I'd be fine. The body will tell you.

I can drink like a fish and it doesn't bother me.

Drinking through straws I thought was supposed to be a no-no. It can cause pain due to air getting into your system, and burping isn't as pleasant as a post-op. I accidentally drank from a straw shortly after surgery. It was just me being absent minded.

Nothing happened.

I was warned that as a post-op I would have some horribly stinkstarded gas. I mean the kind that will make my wife pass out when it billows from under the covers.

Post surgery I can't pass gas to save my life. I thought I had to and my wife said she thought was I was going to do more than toot.

Of course some changes make logical sense, but others I question what I'm being told. Doctors are human, after all. They're not infallible. They simply have more authority on the matter. (I'll also note that I don't put it past doctors to lie a bit just to get patients to cooperate a bit more. The only thing keeping me from having ice cream and cake at a birthday party is the fear of utter pain and agony from sugar crashing from my digestive system into my bloodstream and flooding my brain...look up "dumping" if you want to know more of the nasty part, but if you thought the writing about gas was bad you probably should avoid it).

Example: sugars are bad. Avoid processed foods and sweets...candy, cakes, brownies...basically the good things in life that fit in your piehole (why do you think it's called a piehole if it's not meant for pies?). I can't have barbecue sauce either (I've found many online horror stories from post-ops who tried ribs and ended up curled in the fetal position afterwards).

But I have had some honey mixed with oatmeal. Not bad. I'm not mainlining honey but it does contain a natural sugar.

So..am I being told to avoid sugars in general because for most patients it's easier than educating them on the specifics, that some forms of sugar are bad while others aren't? Is it possible my body still has some amazing tolerances? Maybe instead of not tolerating sugars, post-ops can only tolerate certain amounts over which I end up a twitching, crying baby?

I am not supposed to drink before and after meals. Why? Is it because there's not enough space in the pouch, so I won't eat enough nutritionally? Will it help empty the pouch faster, preventing proper digestion, thus reducing my calorie count more (which I'd think is a good thing...)? Is it for my own good, avoiding pains and discomfort?

I was also told to listen to my body, and that it would signal hunger and satiety. I can eat then drink within five minutes and there is zero discomfort. No pains. No felt side effects.

I was also told that I could be satisfied with just a dixie cup of food three times a day. Surgery was about five months ago and I can tell you...no. I definitely feel like more. Head hunger? Or physical hunger? I definitely eat less than I used to. But a dixie cup...no. I eat approximately six ounces of food (I weigh it out on a kitchen scale) three times a day plus some peanuts during the day, and so far I'm losing weight. No pains. No other issues that I know of, at least until I get blood test results saying I'm malnourished.

Is something wrong with my pouch? Or is it just the individual effects of the surgery on my body? Everyone reacts differently but I sometimes wonder if I wasn't fed a few bits of misinformation along the way. I wonder if I've "damaged" the pouch but from what I was told that's basically a non-issue, or I'd know about it if I did something like that.

There were times I really wondered if something was wrong so I pushed my meal sizes early on. It was a glorious day for me when I had a little too much at Panera one day and felt pain. I knew that meant that yes, my stomach was indeed smaller. I've had this happen to me maybe four times in five months; not agonizing pain, but just a twinge uncomfortable enough that I would have to stand and walk it off or sit and twist around a lot until it passed in about fifteen minutes.

Those times were reassuring that something did still work.

Maybe sometime I'll get more of the full story on these issues. In the meantime I'm still curious if much of what I'm told isn't the dietary equivalent to telling children about the Boogeyman coming to get them if they didn't pick up their rooms; "If you eat a brownie, you'll feel pain that makes you wish you had DIED!" Most of what they're telling me seems an awful lot like a conspiracy to make me eat less and make more healthy choices in what I eat, to eat more sensibly under threat of digestive retribution.

Then again, maybe that's what it takes for some people to lose weight. Fear.

Don't Hire Fat People!

This is a rather inflammatory title to a blog entry. The real issue comes from this article at the diet blog regarding employers being compelled to pay for weight loss surgery.

Long story short: overweight cook at a pizza joint is hit in the back with a freezer door. Overweight dude needs back surgery to fix the injury and solve chronic pain issue. Overweight dude's doctors refuse to do it unless he loses weight, going from pre-injury 340 pounds to 380 pounds post-injury. Employer says he'll pay for back surgery, but not weight surgery.

So they go to court, and the court says pizza people, you're paying for both.

Hmm...

The blog entry is asking whether this should be the case, whether they are obligated to pay for the weight loss surgery.

My take on it, as was brought up in the comments, is that court cases like this are going to be used as justification for discrimination against fat people being hired by employers who can't afford the health costs.

As a fat person I was asked when interviewing for one job whether I would be "able to handle" moving building to building for my job requirements. There was a definite undercurrent of "we see you're qualified, probably overqualified, but we're concerned you're too damn fat to do these things."

I'm well aware that I've cost my current employer, or at least the healthcare system, additional bucks from having surgery. The upside is that I would have cost them more with ongoing treatment of diabetes, cholesterol, hypertension, etc...and the ensuing costs that come from the comorbities.

(Personally many of these costs I also write off to their bureacracies ending up costing WAY more than things should; have you heard of Taiwan's healthcare system?)

In the end, though, the effect will be the same. Fat people won't be hired because they're a liability. They'll tell you there's another reason. There's laws to prevent such discrimination. But how do you prove it unless you're actually told to your face that you're too fat for the job? Are you recording the interview? And if you're in the position that you're looking for a job in the first place how do you afford to hire a lawyer to fight that kind of discrimination, assuming that by some miracle you happened to have a case that could be proven in the first place?

What do you think? Should employers have to pay for such surgeries?

Or is it going to be shared by the majority of people anyway, since costs to health insurance providers ends up getting passed on to every other customer (or employer) anyway? Or in some cases to the government, who in turn taxes the hell out of all of us anyway?

Best Thing Since Fried Butter

Well, actually it is fried butter. Click the link to check it out.

Comes in different flavors. You might think this is crazy...well, I'm not so sure.

• It's a pat of butter. I don't know how many you get served, but it's one pat of butter rolled in a dough. Probably less calories than (or on par with) your average restaurant dinner roll. With a pat of butter.
• It joins the ranks of fried Oreos, twinkies, Coke, pickles, Snickers, Gummi Bears...basically anything that can be dipped in batter and stuck into a fryer.

One or two pats of butter isn't going to kill you. I probably can't have it since I don't know what the surgery effect would be with such greasy fried goo and I'd rather not end up doing Chunk's Truffle Shuffle at a fairground or even around the house. I'm thinking that even if I asked my surgeon or doctor about it they'll tell me it'll put me in the hospital if it means keeping me from even being tempted by a doughy buttery pat of love.

Still...tempting to think about it. Is it as bad or as good as it sounds like it could be? In my mind it could go either way. I thought the same thing about fried Coke but it seems to be selling somewhere...(Insert smiles here)

Weigh-In Progress: 9/11/09

Today was another weigh-in day. I usually will try weighing myself on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule or on a Tuesday-Thursday, alternating on the days of the week depending on how things kind of work out. Believe it or not this is actually the least anal-retentive way for me to do this...I used to be more obsessive about doing it more often and having small mental fits of beating myself up if I missed a day. I'm trying to change a habit by alternating like this on a less intensive schedule.

Anyway it's been awhile since showing my progress. This week...I suspect something is wrong with my scale or my eyes. I can think of no other reason since I'm really careful about taking my readings; no clothes, first thing after using the restroom in the morning, and I get on the scale, take the reading, get off and zero it, get back on. I repeat on the scale until I come up with a consistent number at least twice in a row and it can't keep oscillating between two readings. But this according to my trends has been quite a loss for one week.

This morning I weighed in at 276 pounds. Since my April surgery that means I've lost 100 pounds, and since I started dieting on January 1st I've lost 182 pounds. It's all on the spreadsheet right here.

But for the week...my weight on 9/7, Monday, was 280.5. I've lost four and a half pounds in one week.

Maybe this isn't as unusual as I thought. I'll have to look at the chart statistics to see if I've lost like this in weeks past. Most of it is probably from water retention on various weeks; days where I had too much salty foods at just the wrong time.

Someday I'll sit down and compile some statistics on the weight loss trends. For now I'll just keep trying; FitDay tells me that my BMI is still a staggering 38.5. Ugh. It likes to remind me: "Your weight is 96.8 lbs above the healthy range."

Time to get ready for work...

How Do You Maintain Weight Loss?

I just ran across yet another article in a blog asking about how someone can maintain a weight loss. This person said they lost 20 pounds and regained it all in 16 weeks...oh no!

I was going to quote the article in question (I try to avoid just tossing around crap into the blog without some pointer to where I got the information...it's bad form not to) but thought, y'know, I've run into this several times before, it's like some kind of group whine. Why not just do a quick Google and post the results?

"Maintain weight loss".

Holy shnikeys...

I'm not a diet guru. I'm not a scientist (although I enjoy science-related articles). I'm not a believer in woo, and like to fancy myself a bit of a skeptic.

But from what I can find on the topic, the answer is quite simple. The person who gained it back didn't change their lifestyle. They went on a "diet", then went off it.

"Yay! I lost twenty pounds! Time to have a cookie because I deserve it!"

No. You can lose weight temporarily by dieting. Eventually the diet mutates into a number of, "Oh, what would it hurt?", and "Just one more"'s until your waistline gets bigger and bigger and your skinny jeans make you look like a stuff sausage.

The answer is to change your lifestyle.

That's right, you need to actually change your lifestyle to accommodate a less calorie-centric lifestyle. Just check this article out.

If you enjoy your happy pasta-carb-sweets-relaxing lifestyle, then the lifestyle that keeps pounds off sucks. Go ahead and admit it. You don't like the sweaty life, then living it will suck. So you have to evaluate if the weight loss is worth changing gears.

There are times I hate my new lifestyle. I force myself to go to the gym during the week. An hour of walking the treadmill and playing with weight machines still hasn't seemed to make me a sweet prize on the beach, but I still do it since there's a pre-paid year's membership that would be wasted without it. As I type this I'm biking on my recumbent stationary bike and sweating like a pig (thank $DEITY for the USB keyboard or my laptop would be a mess). I've burned 239 calories so far according to the readout of supposed burned calories while surfing the web and working on this. And I'm still pdaling away...about 8 mph and 4.33 miles. I think...hope it's not in metric...

Anyway, lifestyle. I had the surgery (duh...I mean, Barry Atric?), and the real benefit to it is that it frees people with my brain wiring from having to come up with reasons to not indulge in what other people want you to do to fit in and end up sliding up the scale. Yes, RnY reduces your body's ability to absorb as many calories and that helps. But in the end your body heals up to the point where you can still cheat it and gain the weight back. A pouch isn't going to stop you from slowly slurping ice cream and shakes or pureeing Oreos. Eating a meal slowly will allow it to slip right through the pouch.

Okay, sugars can cause you to have cramps and explosive poo. Gross, but true. You need to know that if you're considering the surgery anyway. Also you'll be more sensitive to certain foods...I've noticed that if I try having too much of a portion of pasta, for example, I don't quite feel as well as usual. Not sick, but not exactly the best of shape either.

The more in tune you are with your body the more you notice the effect.

Where was I? Oh yes. The surgery gives you an excuse. I have fear of certain foods; go to a restaurant, and you don't know what's on the steak or in that burger. You don't know if the oil something is fried in will cause a quick run to the restroom or cramps that will make you want to vomit. So I would like certain things like pancakes from the breakfast buffet, but...not worth it. I recently went to a farewell lunch at a chinese buffet in town for some short-term coworkers moving into sunnier pastures...and ate nothing. The stuff I enjoy are things I shouldn't have because they could all trigger some nasty side effects. I could probably have lettuce and some cheese and egg, yes, but...nope. Not worth it when I had something packed for lunch that I know I like and tolerate.

The excuse is just to explain...I had surgery. Stomach doesn't work like yours.

And it's true.

A friend of mine had a birthday party. My wife and I were talking about plans for it, and I can take my lunch (I actually ended up having half a Panera sandwich before going, since his party was in mid-afternoon), and my wife said she couldn't take something if she didn't have lunch because it would be a social faux-pas. "It's rude!" she proclaimed.

I don't see a problem with it. If your diet is different than other peoples, whether by preference or choice or surgery or a combination (as it is with me), I don't see a problem with reducing their burden of having to accommodate me by supplying food for me. I feel bad for schools where one kid with a peanut allergy means no kid in the class is allowed to have a PB&J sandwich because Frankie could fall over with a reaction; the many have to change their choices because of one person. I don't want to be that one person.

So I take stuff with me.

The surgery means that I take stuff in to some places with me. Fast food joints don't care, especially if I order a water and am with other people eating their fare. Most small restaurants...like the buffet breakfast I went to and the chinese place...didn't charge anything because I didn't eat. Some could probably be set right if I showed them the ugly scar on my gut. Apparently most people don't know how to react to that and it's easier to back off than pursue a ten dollar bill for food not eaten.

I've talked about the surgical help. But I did this once before. I lost a couple hundred pounds several years ago, back around 2001, by going on a very low calorie diet. It was about 600 calories a day, and I lost a lot in just a year's time.

There are those who shudder at this. "How can he do it!? It's not sustainable!"

The only side effect were gallstones. My gall bladder had to be removed after ending up with acute pancreatitis. I just lost weight too fast, I guess.

But the diet itself I didn't mind. Why?

I have aspergers, and some of the traits lend itself well to changing lifestyle at times. In particular, if you change a habit over the course of a few weeks and don't alter them again, I get into a "groove" that tends to work for me. I had a lifestyle that enabled me to eat a certain schedule with certain things like tracking calorie counts with foods available at the supermarket and I got into a routine of when to buy what. It was relatively cheap and efficient, too. I took all my meals with me. And also thanks to my mental wiring, I quite frankly didn't give a @#$ what people thought of the fat guy carrying a plastic Glad box with an Egg Beater sandwich into a restaurant and ordering water.

Well, that's not entirely true. After I started dating my now-wife, and meeting her family which included a person well versed in managing food services, along with the constant disapproval from a few people close to me I did start changing my habits again. I started to fall back into my depression behaviors, namely not giving a damn anymore about what I'd done. So I gained it back. So while the battle of not caring about what the general public thought was true, the war with those behind enemy lines did kind of wear on me; my environment was changing and I in the end used it as an excuse to go back to my old habits. Even that's not entirely true...I gained most of the weight back, not all, and it was through new sets of bad habits.

I know I wasn't microwaving pizza rolls in the middle of the night to gain the weight that the surgery took off, for example.

The point is that when I lost weight, major weight, both times it came through some form of change, not just a temporary gimmick. No pills or special berries or what is being touted on TV. I had to change my lifestyle.

Some diet plans even incorporate this. Weight Watchers is partially successful because of this. It's a diet that "you can live with" and "incorporate into a healthy lifestyle". Atkins becomes a religion for their followers. If you can get "into" a diet, the you're pretty set to keep your weight off. But for people that just crash diet or go a month without their Starbucks and Dunkin' D visits...nope.

The answer is simple. The implementation is not.

Notice there's a difference.

I have come to the realization that my surgery, in my case, was largely a crutch to institute a long term change as a get-out-of-jail card. "I had surgery, I can't have your pie." Unsaid: don't be offended. I'll get sick if I eat your food, but I'm sure it's very good, and believe me there's a part of me that would love to dive in.

I said I have aspergers, so this also helps in situations that I don't fully understand, like the birthday party. I don't see it as a faux-pas to take something with me if I like it for food. Other people...normals...apparently get offended. Well now I have an ace. I had the surgery. I can't indulge. I came here because I wanted to see my friend and wish him a happy birthday, and I appreciated being included in the invitations. It was a lovely time. My wife and son had some food that was prepared. The extent of my food intake was a slice of cheese, and it was more than enough for me.

When it comes to food there are so many implications for society that we don't even realize it anymore. It has it's own rituals, its own meaning. It's an insult; I stopped trying to cook post-surgery after my wife accused me of trying to make her fat (I wasn't; I was fascinated by the disconnect between hunger and sensory input I had shortly after the surgery, and was exploring how wonderful everything seemed even though I wasn't hungry for it. So WEIRD!). People get offended if you aren't eating their beans at a family picnic, or don't have their burgers and hot dogs, even though most of the time it's something they threw together in an hour and not something they labored over for hours. We eat to comfort (you never heard of comfort food?), to encourage (Want ice cream? Win the game! Want dessert? Finish your spinach...), to socialize (farewell dinners, birthday party in the conference room), to make friends (snacky tray for work anyone? Be a hero and get a box of bagels!), to pass time,...it's confusing for those of us that aren't wired like the majority are.

So when I say it's an easy answer, it's true. Change your lifestyle. Doing it? Not so easy. Finding a way to properly frame your changes, your perspective, that's the key. In order to keep that weight off you need to figure out how to ask the right question.

It's a long trip. Grab a six-inch ham sub at Subway without the mayo and some walking shoes and head down the road until you find the answer. If you're serious about the change the answer will come to you.

Where's My Lavosh?? Stupid Walmart...

Most of the time my diet consists of a plain home-made wrap, usually with thin-sliced ham and lowfat cheese and mushrooms, maybe some salsa or mustard mixed in. Small, simple, easy to pack. I estimate that the calories are under or around 300 a pop (the tortilla is 2.5 grams of fat and it comes in at around 120 calories, the cheese is 25 or 50, depending on if I use one or two slices of 2% cheese; the ham is only two thin slices, so I don't think I have a full serving of that and the mushrooms are probably 1/4 of a small can so it would be roughly 10 to 15 calories. Sometimes I put a whole slice of cheese in like swiss...that's roughly 80 calories. So from the numbers let's say it's roughly 120+25+15+80+ham which would be...carry the 4 plus pi...240 plus the ham, I'll venture 50 calories for the ham if that. Less than three hundred.

What's the point? The point is that calorie counting sucks. Which I normally don't do or I'd have it all at my fingertips instead of meandering through my calorie count above. I have roughly three of those plus some peanut butter and peanuts to get me through workouts.

Which has nothing to do with lavoshes.

Okay. Three of those wraps a day...I don't not enjoy it, but I do enjoy breaking it up once in awhile. Often it's by ordering a sandwich at Panera, which gives me two meals (1/2 sandwich per meal). Other times we go to a Super Walmart where I discovered this wrap they have called a turkey lavosh.

The lavosh is actually a kind of flatbread. There's a hard, crisp version and a soft version; I like the soft. At the Super Walmart they make a wrap out of it with turkey and some cheese and pepper mixture...it's good!

the problem is that they rarely have it.

I would go there and if it's near lunch, they're gone. I ask the deli and they refuse to make them; the person working the counter said they make them in the morning and that's it.

I'm thinking...if you sell out every time, why aren't you making more to, I don't know, make more money?

My wife had an occasion to go out of town for training. While in this other town she went to a Super Walmart local there...they had lavoshes! Every time she was there! And...they were cut funny...weird.

The Walmart near us was cutting it into four pieces. The other walmart had six. Same overall amount, just...funny cuts that I wasn't accustomed to. But it was okay, because they had yummy yummy lavoshes!

...until my wife ended her training there.

I got fed up with our Walmart; my wife had some errands to run at a nearby business the next day, so I called that particular Walmart and asked to talk to someone in the deli. I then asked for 2 lavoshes...and they complied. That was nice of them.

Another day I asked my wife to call in because she said she had to go up there for some errands. When I got home I discovered that they "don't make same day orders".

You're a deli. Why is this a challenge to make an effing lavosh?

More to the point...why are you inconsistent? The other Walmart makes them. You guys...I don't know if they actually make them or not. It's like they only make them if it strikes their fancy.

Inconsistency...bad. When I go to a McDonald's I pretty much know what to expect. I don't expect one McD's to offer a double cheeseburger but another to only offer a McNugget, or for one to end breakfast at 10:30 and another at 9:30. So why exactly are Walmart stores doing their own thing?

Annoying. One more annoyance I'd rather not deal with.