Blah....blahhhhhhhhhhh

I'm feeling kinda blahhhhh today!  There is so much hype going into the CHRISTmas holiday and then for me it's always a huge let down when it's over.  Usually takes me a few days to get over the fact that it's actually over.

We had a wonderful Christmas.  My younger sister, bro-in-law and nephew & neice arrived in IN safely (treaveling from NC) and will be here until Jan. 2nd.  My older sister, bro-in-law and nephew & neice were able to be at Mom & Dad's for our family Christmas celebration.  My one bro-in-law is an EMT and had to work on Christmas day so the rest of us (12 in total) spent all day Christmas day at Mom & Dad's playing games and eating. We all spent the night....had a big slumber party, the kids really loved it! Then the day after Christmas we had our tradtional B~I~G breakfast and exchanged gifts. 

My Sweetie got me 1/4 ct diamond earrings,  DVD set of  season 2 "Friends" (my favorite show), a pair of gloves and the best thing was that he hand wrote me a letter that made me cry.  He's such a sentimental guy!  The kids got me a pair of cool snow boots which came in handy yesterday for the beautiful snow we got.....too bad we didn't have it for Christmas day.

Other than the fact that I'm bummed that Christmas is over, I'm B~L~A~H because I have been eating horribly and I've not excercised in well over 6 weeks.  I'm so mad at myself! Here I have been given this great opportunity (lap band surgery) to get myself in shape and better health and I've basically wasted the past 2 months.  Even though I have not gained weight I have not lost anymore!  I have decided that I'm going to start the new year off and refocus. I'm thinking I'm going to try the 5 day Pouch Test  (http://www.5daypouchtest.com/plan/theplan.html). I'm calling on all my fellow bandsters to see what ya'll think. Do you have any better ideas to motivate me and jump start my weight loss....again?  You ladies have been a wonderful support to me since my surgery and I'm calling on you to help me get this thing back in gear! I am desperate! HELP!

42 down and size 16W jeans!

I was pleasantly surprised when I weighed yesterday and found 206 staring up at me!  I just about fell off the scale!  That's a total of 42 pounds lost since my Aug. 4th surgery.

Ricky and I went shopping tonight and I bought a pair of 16W jeans.  I thought they looked really good....Rick said they were okay but he thought they were a little big.  I went ahead and bought them because I felt good in them and I really neeed a pair of jeans to wear since the 3 pair I have now are just about too B~I~G!  Yeah.....now if I could just figure out how to get that money tree to grow so that I can go on a real shopping trip.

I wanted to give a quick shout out to some new hair products that I've recently tried and since fell in love with.  Currently I am using the mousse and hairspray of the Fat Hair line.  It's made a huge difference in the thickness of my hair.  I plan to get the shampoo and conditioner this week to add to my collection.  I got mine at Walgreens and I think that Target sells it too, though I haven't checked for sure.

38.4

Just a quick fly-by post..........weighed this AM and I'm down 38.4 pounds.  Slow and steady wins the race!

Doctor visit and an un-fill

I went to see my doctor yesterday.  The GOOD news is that when the nurse measured my waist I was 5" smaller than at my last visit (my 1 month post op visit, now 3 months ago!)  Yeah for small victories.  He said that my weight loss is right on target but he was concerned that I was having issues with solid foods.  I really didn't want him to do an unfill but after he checked me out he thought it was best. He said the best way to work the band is to eat solid food, not yogurt, soup, ice cream. He warned that eventually eating only soft foods would catch up with me.  OUCH did that needle hurt. (way more than the 2 fills I've had). He only took out 3/4 of a cc which leaves me now at 2.50 cc's.  That certainly doesn't sound like much but I do feel so much better since the unfill.  No stuck issues. He thinks I'm pretty close to being at the optimum fill level.  He also said that if I continue to have issues with solids foods then we would have to go back in under fluoroscope and take a look while I drink so he can watch the fluid pass through my band but I don't think that will be necessary. We'll see!

I wish I could say that I am drinking the HUGE amounts of fluids that I should be but I am not.  I have never been a big drinker.  I just never thought I needed that much fluid.  But I will say that after having been plagued with horrible headaches for years I think I've finally figured out that I've been dehydrated for all these years!  Soon after my surgery I realized that I was not having as many headaches and I started paying attention to how it correlated with my fluid intake.  Sure enough....when I don't take in enough fluids I tend to get a headache and the less I take in the worse the headache!  My doctor recommends 64-80 oz. of fluid/day (probably pretty much the same as my fellow bandsters?)  We I usually drink a cup of coffee in the AM (8 oz) and if I get an UNsweet tea from McDonald's I drink that by the time I go to bed (not sure how many oz. in the tea) or if I am running late and I don't have time to stop at Mcydee's then I drink bottled water (sometimes with Crystal Light mixed in).  One bottle of water (the kind we have at work) is roughly 16 oz.  I must admit that some days I do not get even a whole bottle down.YIKES!  Yesterday I drank one before lunch and one before I went to bed.  So that would be a total of 40 oz (1 cup coffee and 2 bottles of water) and that's on a GOOD day!  Why is it that I don't like to drink? I guess if I'm not thirsty I don't think about drinking.  AAArrrgggghhhhhh! Very frustrating and definitely something that I need to work on.

I had an awesome lunch today or at least I thought so.  I was in a hurry this AM (had to be at work at 7AM0 so I grabbed something out of the freezer.  It was a Great Value (Wal Mart) brand frozen chicken cordon blue chicken breast and it was so good! Yum, yum and it filled me up!  Just thought I would pass that along to anyone that is interested.  They come packaged 4 to a box and they are individually wrapped.  It's a quick and easy meal.

Gotta go get Bekah from school.  I finally caught up on the back log of blogs I had't had time to read.  I hope I can keep up now!  You girls are doing great and it's so nice to have a group of friends (I hope I can call ya'll friends) who are going through similar circumstances and that we can support each other.

Blessings to ya'll,
Sarah