One year, one person lost.

I'm back! Well, for a little bit at least. I've been spreading myself thin lately (pun intended) and I just haven't had a chance to write anything out for a blog. Truth is, not much has happened in terms of my surgery and losing weight. I haven't had anything go wrong, nothing happen to me out of the ordinary, nothing has creeped up on me during the last time I posted to really write about. I can sit and bullshit with you for a few paragraphs like I normally do every week and really write about nothing or I can write every once in a while and cover many topics. I don't know what is the best way to approach this.

 This blog was meant to cover everything that has happened to me over the year after my Roux en y surgery to lose weight. It was a crazy experience the first 6 months, but lately, nothing has happened worth mentioning. I've read a lot of blogs that people have wrote and most of them have good experiences and bad experiences to write about. And while reading them, there were little tips to help you out on your journey through the weight loss surgery process. I don't have that. I've had nothing but great success with my surgery 9 months ago. I haven't had any weird experiences that warrant me writing about. I guess you can say I'm lucky! 

 Actually yesterday was my birthday (July 3) and that was the day, last year, that started my weight loss journey. My wife bought me a membership to our local Snap Fitness for my birthday and I started working towards a goal. A goal that eventually that same year I would be having surgery to lose weight. I wanted to lay down the ground work before having surgery so that once I got to an decent weight, I would continue working out for the rest of my life. Not even just lifting weights, but just being active in general. And in this little journey of mine, at the one year start of this, I've lost a total of 182lbs. Basically, one average size person! Not quite where I wanted to be, but I will take it. I really wanted to lose 200lbs by this time, but it just wasn't in the cards I guess. Just 2 days ago I broke the 250lbs mark and I'm now 248lbs. Over the last 2 months I haven't gained or lost much and I've stayed between 259lbs and 250lbs. 2 weeks ago when my wife's cousin was up from Texas, was kind of bad and I reached 259lbs after a weekend of basically bad choices in food and drinks. It was a hell of a fun weekend, but the liqueur consumption was a lot for me who normally doesn't drink. It was fun to actually let lose and have fun for once, so I don't regret it and was back on track the next day. 

Now going back to the spreading my self thin part. I feel like I have so much shit going on right now.  First I'm trying to start a business (sort of) making bracelets and things out of paracord. So far, it's a little slow, but I'm trying to get a Facebook and twitter page started up and I've been slacking because I have other stuff going on. The Other stuff being my new obsession of riding my bike. I LOVE riding my bike! So much in fact that I'm considering doing the Black Bear Bicycle Tour in my town next year. That race is a 100 mile long race that starts in Grayling, Mi and ends in Oscoda, Mi. That is a hell of a long ride for a dude who just recently found a new passion in bike riding. Now, I can't say for sure ill do it. I most likely wont because there are more downfalls to it than up sides. One being, that it is a 100 MILES long! That is such a long time to be on a bike that i cant even imagine my junk working after that. Oh and for those of you who think big cushiony seats are the way to go on a bike, think again. Those things are the devil and make your mmmmmmmpackage go numb so quick! I need a new seat badly for my bike. When I bought my bike used, it came with that kind of seat already. I was use to riding a seat that was long and narrow and had a split at the back end of it for cushion. I loved that seat, but sadly it wasn't mine and I'm not paying $150 dollars for it.   Second, it's one "straight" shot from one town to another. Meaning, it doesn't loop around. So I'd have to make sure I had someone pick me up if I made it to Oscoda, it doesn't loop around like other races do.  Those are the two main reasons, that and we only have summer in our area for like 2 months and then it's cold and I don't want to be riding when it's cold out. Indoor trainers are ok, but it sucks just sitting stilly would sponsor  and not going anywhere. Oh, another reason is I think it's going to be kind of expensive to do. I have to get my bike in race shape, new pedals, seat, tires, etc. Then get my self in race shape, riding shirt, shorts, helmet, etc. My work said they would sponsor me, but I don't think they would cover the cost of all that stuff. Plus, I'm not even sure my bike would work for the race. Most people use a road bike, I have a Trek 3900 mountain bike, I don't think it's gonna cut it. I was laughed at by a couple of people when I told them I was going to use my bike. They said that I must love doing things the hard way and that I love pain. So now I'm thinking I will just do a few smaller races and maybe I'll enter the Big Mac's Spring Bike Tour and Mackinac Bridge ride. That is a race that has 4 different lengths, 25,50,75, and 100 miles. And you ride on Saturday and then Sunday, you are allowed to ride your bike across the Mackinac Bridge! Which, if you don't live in Michigan, is a damn big bridge that connects the upper peninsula to the lower peninsula. I think it's about 8 miles long, almost 600 feet tall and is about close to 200 feet off of the water. That's a hell of a long fall to take if you get blown off of the bridge! Anyways, I think I'll work towards that goal next year instead of the Black Bear tour. The Big Mac tour seems like it will be a lot more fun! 

The biggest thing I have going on as well is trying to juggle time with my family. I'm doing a shitty job right now, but I hope I can improve on it soon. I think that is a struggle for everyone. And I don't want to miss out on anything just because I have other things going on. Basically, now that I have a HUGE weight lifted off of me (for real), I want to do everything! I also realize that I can't do everything as well. So I'm sticking with the important ones right now. I do the paracording so I can keep my hands busy, no idle hands here. I do the bike riding to stay in somewhat shape. And I want to spend time with my family because my little girls are only so little, for so long and I feel like I've been forgetting that fact. So this blog will get updated from time to time, just not every week like I want. Who knows, maybe the writing bug will hit me again and I'll do it every week, but like I said, the summers are short here and I want to enjoy the warmth as much as possible! Have a great day everyone!

Insanity, not so much.

See that guy laying on the floor in the picture with the circle drawn around him and the word FAIL pointing at him, that was Jodi and I. Let me explain.

  After putting on a full metal knee brace, an ankle brace and wrapping my whole abdominal area with the binder I got when I had surgery, for two days of insanity, we decided that it just wasn't for us. Kind of bummed, but it's probably for the best.  Jodi didn't like it, I didn't mind it, but I don't think I was doing everything correctly, so that's why I didn't mind it. I went in knowing I hadn't did anything like this in over 13 years. I figured it was tough, but I still wanted to do it. I also kept saying lets do this at our own pace and just try to get through it. I figured, at least we are doing something for 45 minutes a night instead of sitting on our asses watching tv. The bad thing about doing any of these "fitness DVDs" is that with my knees, anything involving lower body moves is painful. So I have to modify pretty much every move in the Insanity arsenal, which in turn, makes everything easier. Im also looking at it like this, I have to go to a job outside of home where I have to climb up and down out of a truck all day, I don't need to be injuring myself and being out of work with no pay.  So where Jodi was full on doing everything like you should, I was basically half assing it. Even half assing it, it was still hard as hell.  So we decided that going from not doing anything remotely close to insanity to diving right in to it, probably wasn't the smartest thing.  

After the insanity fail, Jodi said we should try Jillian Michaels 30 day shred. I was a little hesitant at first because I looked at it as a women's work out. Then after doing level one of it, I realized it was pretty tough. This was more up our Steam Pipe Ally. It wasn't crazy like the insanity DVD, but it wasn't  just a stand around and move your arms a little bit DVD either. Probably a better choice to start out with, honestly. I guess I don't care what the hell we do, as long as we are doing something together. I wanted us to workout together so we didn't have the excuse of saying we had no time to workout. I always felt bad going to the gym after work around 5pm and coming home at 6pm to eat dinner, get kids their bath, put them to bed, then off to bed in an hour or so after that.  That gave no time for Jodi to go to the gym at a reasonable time and workout. I figured, if we both did a DVD workout, we could get everything done by 8pm, then get ready to do a workout by 8:30pm and then have some time to chill after, before bed. 

So now we decided that we would do her Jillian Michaels 30 day shred DVD a few days a week. Throw in a few days of bike riding after dinner. Also we would do the Insanity Fit test every Monday and Friday and maybe throw in another one of the insanity DVDs to work out with as well. I don't want to abandon the idea of doing insanity. Who knows, maybe I'll do it on my own in the morning, just to see how long I can do the program itself. Yeah, probably not. Ha!

What's up!?

Well, I'm back at it again. I have a few ideas for some post, but I'm trying to craft one in particular so that its not too much personnel information. It's one thing to talk about stuff with your dude friends and even your doctor, it's another to just type it out for people you know and random people in Russia to see. I don't care my self personally, but I'm sure my wife doesn't want to be embarrassed about the stuff I typed and she has family that reads this as well. I guess that hasn't stopped me before, I've always tried to be very honest and blunt about the stuff I write here. I do that because some people's blogs about gastric bypass aren't. And as a former fat dude searching the interweb, I appreciated the blogs I found that were open and very honest about their times going through gastric bypass. So with that said, if you see a post entitled with the phrase, TMI, open at your own risk.  Of course you know you will, that don't have the saying, curiosity killed the cat for nothing. :)

It's been a long, but fast year since I made the decision to go forward with having  Roux En Y ( RNY) surgery done. At the end of June, beginning of July is when I was too fat to pass my DOT physical and decided to do something about it.  As you all know, when I had my first meeting with my surgeon, he asked what weight I wanted to see at the end of all of this. Basically, what weight did I want to be down to by the end of a year to 18 months after surgery. I told him that if I could be 250lbs, I'd be happy as a pig in shit. Well, I can say as of yesterday, June 1st, I made that weight. Now, I'm not totally happy with that number. I say that because since that talk with my surgeon in August 2012, my goals have readjusted because I was losing weight a lot quicker than we expected. So the number I wanted to be at when June 1st rolled around was 245lbs. I know, big deal right? I missed it by 5lbs, but that number was a goal that I should have been easily beat had I stayed on track with things.  I didn't though, I didn't stay on track and missed an easy goal that was set by my surgeon a few months ago. It's my fault though. I put my gym membership on hold 2 months ago because the weather in Michigan WAS getting nice and then sure enough, shitty ass Michigan weather turned around and made it cold as shit and snowy. I wanted to be able to take the kids out side and go for walks and bike rides and not be stuck inside a gym for an hour. So when the weather turned back to shit gain, I decided I would go in Maintenance mode. Now most people that have had the surgery, don't hit maintenance mode until the "honeymoon" is over which is about 12 to 18 months after surgery. That's when you should be at your goal weight and from there, you start maintaining that weight for the rest of your life. Well, at the rate I was going, I was gonna hit my original goal weight (250lbs) about 6 months after surgery. In my eyes, that felt really quick. To me, that seemed like a lot of weight to drop in a short amount of time with out some kind of unintended consequences springing up to bite my ass. For example, having my gallbladder taken out. Which I'm sure will happen eventually, maybe not, but I don't need it out this year.  I've been 260lbs since the beginning or so of April. Since then I've been in maintenance mode. I say maintenance mode, but really it's not. Maintenance mode means you're watching what you're eating and working out. I've just been eating what I can and hanging out. I started riding my bike to work and back (about 5 miles in total round trip), but beyond that, nothing. Made my own TRX straps, medicine ball and kettle bell. Did a little bit of heavy bag training, which I didn't win. The bag, that is. If you remember, I joined a weight loss competition through Reset Nation Project and at the end of 45 days, you would see how much weight you lost by percentage. I lost 9.99% of my weight and the girl who beat me lost 10.37%. Yeah, I got beat by a girl. Haha. That I know of, I was the only one who had gastric bypass that entered the competition. Her and I were pretty far ahead of everyone else with losing weight. So she definitely kicked ass. Ok, got side tracked there, I just couldn't remember if I had posted on the blog what the outcome was with that. 

Basically I've been "normal" since the beginning of April until now. Tomorrow (Monday June 3rd) my wife and I start the DVD crazy, Insanity. Yeah, I truly can't wait! We are gonna ease into it at first. I don't want us to get discouraged or worse, injured. I want us to be able to complete the whole course which is about 67 days of jumping around and running in place and pretty much sweating our balls off. Can't wait. I'll report back how the first week goes next Sunday. Until then, much love and respect (add the finger point to you, what up John Basedow!) 

Two randomness goodies.

This will be a quick little post, just because. First, I want to say I very much enjoy The Steve Austin Show that is available to download online for free! If you don't know who Steve Austin is, you've been living under a log for at least 15 years, haven't you? Steve Austin use to be a WWF/E wrestler turned film star. Now he's doing a podcast and just talks about anything and interviews random people from MMA to WWE stars. He's only about 12 podcast shows in or so and they are only about an hour long. What I love is that he's the same dude he was when I was watching him wrestle back in the day as he is now. Same attitude and everything. No bullshit. If you have time, go to podcastone.com and type in Steve Austin Show. All of his shows are there for free! Be forewarned, he swears quite a bit, what do you expect, he's a redneck. 

Now, my second bit of randomness is very simple. I haven't quite got the hang of seeing the new me quite yet. After dropping 175lbs, there are new things to wrap my head around. Recently, it's the fact that I can damn near stick my whole hand in under my armpit, inside my rib cage! In trying my best to describe this, so bear with me. If you were to take your arm, lift it up so that its the same height as your shoulder, flex your chest muscle and then stick your hand under your arm pit. Maybe it's not my rib cage I'm feeling and its just my pec muscle. Haha, I just realized that as I was typing that all out. Ah, I'm a jack ass. Well, still, that feeling is new to me! I've never been able to see any kind of definition what  so ever on my body. Ha! That and when I lay on my back, it's not my belly that sticks out the furthest, it's my rib cage! #FormerFatGuyProblems

Well I'm done with the randomness today. Just wanted to turn out a quick blog. Trying to stay more on top of this! Peace out homie! (In Teagan's voice)

I had chicken livers....twice...in 2 hours.

Know how I was basically bragging about being able to eat anything this morning? Having basically no problems with anything. Yeah, not so much. When I got home from work at 11am I decided to go and do some yard work. It's a beautiful day today and its supposed to rain the rest of the week so I need some out door goodness. Well I was drinking a peace tea and then another. Before that I only had 20oz of skim milk and some nestle chocolate powder. So around 60 ounces of liquid so far. (This is shinfo to you, but I want to write it down for my own records. Oh and shinfo, if you can't figure that out is shitty info. Wut up C and R?!) 

Anyways, around 1:45pm I decided I was hungry and went inside to make chicken livers. Mmmmm!!! I made about 6oz of them up and only ate only 3oz and wa going to leave the rest for tomorrow. I had a 1oz bag of cheddar multigrain chips and 1 sweet potato chip from my wife's bag of chips. I was stuffed! Like, really stuffed. So I went back out to finish up the yard work thinking it would pass. 

Well, Jodi left for town and I mowed the other part of the yard and then went inside to check if Peyton was still sleeping and it hit me. These chicken livers Didn't like my little pouch apparently because they came back up. I've been to this rodeo before, I bring a little up and I feel fine and I can drink some water and go on about my pouched self. Not this time. It was bad, Pee Wee, bad. So basically everything I ate came back up. So now I'm sucking on a peppermint hard candy and watching my daughter try to give me kisses through her jail cell (crib). 

Why did I post this you ask? Eh, because I can and sometimes I like to share randomness like this. Plus, its nice to know what really goes on while you're going through Weight Loss Surgery (WLS), at least thats what i like to know when I'm reading a persons blog about WLS. If you like more randomness, wait for tonight, I'm gonna post a Vine Video from my past. If you didn't know, I use to be a professional backyard wrestler back in the day. :D So if you don't have the Vine app, get it! 

Follow me on Vine: vine://user/913146906639740928

And on Twitter: BiggieDeline

Almost 7 months out.

I wish I was more consistent with my blogs. I don't know why, it's just that sometimes I have the urge to write and other times that is the furthest thing from my mind. Maybe if I had more interesting things to talk about, that would make it easier. Who knows?

 Anyways, last month I had my 6 month check up. I think I mentioned that in my last blog, but I'm not sure. 6 months since they rearranged my guts and everything has been great!! I can now say that I can eat everything I once ate with no problems. Which is good, but is also kind of bad. I know I've mentioned this before, but I'm a little bummed that I can still have sweets an junk food. I was hoping that my body would totally reject those foods and make me sick. Unfortunately, that's not the case. I do however see it as a good thing because at least I don't feel like the outcast at parties for not being able to have a little bit. I'm actually glad I can have everything now because that just makes me feel normal.

 The only thing I won't go back to is pop/soda. I don't crave it and I don't want to even go back to drinking it. I know a lady who had this surgery done a little after me and is drinking Dt. Coke already. I guess, hey, to eAch their own, with provolone, baby (C and R, wut up?!) but that is one of the main things they tell you to try and not pick back up. Not only because of th extra calories, but because of the carbonation in it, it expands the stomach. I know you can drink diet, but you're only fooling yourself in to thinking that its good for you because it doesn't have any calories in it. I will occasionally pick up a Gatorade here an there or a Peace Tea every once in a while. For the most part, I stick with water and a packet of flavored powder stuff. Like crystal light or something to that effect. It's probably not that good for you, but that's all that I've been drinking since my surgery. I should buy stock in the Great value powder drink mix! Ha!

 I went in to this surgery just wanting help with portion control. I have that now! I'm basically able to have a somewhat normal portion of food now. Which is good for me. My nurse at the surgery center is extremely pleased at how far I've come. I've lost just over 140lbs since surgery at the End of October. Which is amazing to them! Since the beginning of July I've lost just over 175lbs. So to me, I think I've been doing great. I don't think my portions are totally out of whack. Right now I'm at a weight (255lbs) that I could live with for the rest of my life. Well, until next time, have a great day!

This year went to fast.

So, I'm back with another post. It's been a little bit since my last one. It's been pretty busy and haven't really ha the time to just sit down and write. A week ago today my youngest daughter, Peyton, turned a year old. It truly saddens me to think about it because this past year has just flown by. I also know that in another 6 months, it will be my oldest daughter, Teagan's, 3rd birthday and my one year anniversary for my RNY surgery. My girls are growing up so quick. It seems like yesterday my wife and I were eating pizza in the hospital room while Peyton was with the nurses getting checked up on. Now fast forward a year later and she's destroying her smash cake at her birthday party. It makes me sad to know that she is no longer a baby anymore. She's advanced so much faster than her sister did, it's unreal. I swear, she'll probably be potty trained by Teagan's 3rd birthday. Christ, she was walking at 9 and a half months! Says about a half a dozen words very clear and damn near jogs everywhere. I know they say the second child grows up quicker because they have the older sibling to watch and it's so true. It makes me sad. If you haven't figured out why I keep saying it makes me said, it's because I have to take a break from typing to wipe away the tears. Having kids has made me an emotional bitch sometimes. Tear up for no reason.

While it makes me sad to see my girls grow up quick, it makes me happy I made the right decision to (hopefully) prolong my life and get to see them grow up to be beautiful young women. If there is any doubt or any negativity that ever comes my way because I had the surgery, I just think of my girls and everything is much clearer. Although I had the surgery for me, I did it mostly for Jodi and my girls. I want to be around for them. I want to see my girls get married and have kids when they are 50. I want to be able to keep up with them and do the things they will want to do. At the rate I was going, I wouldn't have made it past 40. Hopefully I've changes that. If a freak thing happens, well then I can't change that. I can change how fat I was and try to live a healthier lifestyle. So far, so good.

So if my daughters ever read this in the future, I want them to know I tried the best that I could. Daddy loves you girls and you mean the world to me. I'm proud of you and your mommy and I love you both very much! Never stop believing in yourselves. You control your own destiny! I love you girls!

Wow.

Last month my sister stopped over for Easter and brought some old pictures and paper work of mine from when I was younger. This was pretty awesome because there were pictures that I've never seen before of myself. The pictures were crazy to see. There were pictures spanning from when I was 3 months old to my senior year of high school. What a blast from the past indeed.

It was great to see because for some reason, I don't have much memories of my childhood. For what ever reason, I don't have a lot of memories I can recall on my own. I can remember snippets of memories here and there, but if I wanted to tell a story about something from my childhood, it's not going to be a long story. For example, I remember having the Animal as a kid. At least I thought I did. Or was I remembering someone that had the Animal or maybe seeing it in a store. I don't remember the commercial, but thanks to YouTube, it's there! And thanks to the photos my sister gave me, its there under the christmas tree!! If you don't remember the Animal, the Animal was a monster truck that would crawl over anything you put in its way with the help of these claws that would stick out of the tire when you turned the knob on the rims. Sounds great in theory, but real world testing proved otherwise. That damn truck wouldn't climb over a blade of grass, let alone a small stick like it would do in the commercial!! "Nothing can stop, THE ANIMAL.......unless it's a blade of grass." My ass.

A lot of times the only reason why I have a memory of something was from the pictures them selves. I guess most people have that, I'm sure, but I do that a lot. A lot of my stories are from pics I've seen and have been told of the stories that go with that pic. I'm jealous of my wife because she has a great memory of what she did as a kid, me, not so much. I wish there was a way for someone to go inside my brain and unlock memories that I have so I can easily access them and not Rely on pictures.

In all of the goodies my sister brought me, I ran across some saddening facts. With all of the pictures she brought, you can see the trend as I got progressively bigger. I've always been big, 10lbs 3ozs when I was born, but I found an interesting piece of paper from when I was 6 years old. The paper was a fitness test that I did for school that probably isn't allowed now a days. With the pussification of America in schools now a days, fitness tests probably aren't allowed because of the kids that can't do half of the drills crying because they get picked on for not being able to do a pull up or a sit-up. The paper has your basic drills for fitness, sit-ups, pull-ups, sit and reaches, endurance run, sprint and the shuttle run. You got either a A for attaining the standard or a O for outstanding. Well, as you can guess I got all O's!! Ok, not really, I got 2 A's and 4 P's. P??!! What the funk is a P???!!!! Does P stand for possible the best???!!! There isn't even a P on the damn test!! How bad is it when you get a P on a fitness test that is scored with either an A or a O?! Looking at it, I'm assuming P stood for participated, Because my scores were pretty shitty. Haha. I'll post a picture of this fitness test at the end. Even with my cruddy scores that I got, that isn't the most depressing part about this paper. At the top of the page, it has my name, weight, height and age. At 6 years old, my height was 51 inches and my weight was a whopping 95lbs! At 6 funking years old I was 95 funking pounds!!! I put my height, weight and age in a BMI calculated and it said, c'mon, give me your real height and weight. I was shocked by what I saw on that piece of paper. To me, I just question why. Why was I so big at 6 years old. Why wasn't anything done about it when I was 6 years old. Why. Pure and simple, why. I can take the blame for being huge when I turned 13, but at 6 years old? Don't get me wrong, I'm not putting the blame on anyone, but I just can't wrap my head around the fact that I was 95lbs at 6 years old.

So that's what I leave you with. I don't have much to say about this and I hope this post made sense. Hell, I'm just typing as I think. Wait, maybe that's the other way around? Whatever, point is, I have no point. Why?

14 inches and growing(amended)

So I'm pretty horrible at this blogging stuff. At least the part where I should be consistent about it. Some days I feel like I could write about 10 different topics. Other days, not so much. Last time, I wrote briefly about editing myself and how I hate doing that. Well, I'm not going to go on a rant like I started to do for that post. I didn't like how it sounded and I know it would have been taken wrong. I'll sum it up by basically saying this, I'm extremely glad I had surgery when I did. I'm glad I didn't wait any longer. I'm also saying this because I haven't had a single major problem with or from this surgery. Since July 1st I've lost 171lbs and still continuing to lose. If you are anything like me and has been a big person all their life and is at a very unhealthy weighty like I was, please try and have this surgery done. I know some insurances aren't all that great or maybe you don't have insurance at all. Trust me on this, you will feel the best you ever have in your life. Hell, I don't care how you lose the weight, just try and do it. Words can't describe how great I feel by dropping 171lbs. They can't. The amount of energy I feel throughout the day is amazing. I love the fact that I'm not as winded anymore so that I can enjoy my kids more. Words also can't describe how much hatred I have for myself, for letting myself get so big. I also don't want to think that what I say is so important they you will change your ways because of what I have to say. I'm not a fool. I just want you to know, that I'm extremely happy that I did change my life around and have the surgery. Easy way or not, I'm so thankful for the decision I made. If you are thinking of getting this surgery done, do your research. Ask your doctor about it and if you feel you aren't getting the answers you want to hear, go to another doctor. It's your decision in the end. My personal doctor was awesome and the people at Grand Traverse Surgery were amazing. I'll say this, make damn sure you are willing to put 110% into this. Don't think you can half ass it and expect to lose the weight. Probably the biggest thing about making this surgery work is exercising. Honestly. Which is what everyone should do anyways, but I obviously I wasn't burning the excess calories that I was taking in, so therefore, I got huge. To end this little rant, please start taking care of yourself. I wish I would have started a lot sooner, but I'm glad I did start before it was too late.

Ps, I find it funny that I said I wasn't going to go on a rant and then end it with "to end this little rant". I'm such a failure. Haha. Oh and the 14 inches and growing is the amount of inches I've lost since July. I still wear my size 52 waist belt. And instead of just subtracting 38 (which is what I wear now)from 52, I pulled out the measuring tape and measured. Yeah, I'm not the brightest. So anyways, you perverts, 14 is the amount of inches I've lost, not something else. :)

Censoring myself.

I normally don't do that, but I really don't want to piss off a bunch of people. I have a post I want to share, but I'm thinking I might not because it could offend a bunch of people. I'm gonna think about it some more. Normally I just write what ever and post it, no proof reading on my part, but as I was writing this last post, I just didn't feel right posting it yet. The post is about being morbidly obese and doing something about it. I feel like I can say what I want about that subject because that is what I was, but I don't want it to come off as arrogant either. I'm gonna give it more thought and if you see a new post with the Title, "15 inches and growing", you know I've decided to post it and its probably going to be long.

Writing these blogs have been fun, but I don't want people pissed at me. I really don't think people would be, but some might and I don't want that. Thank you again for your support.

This is why I'm hot.

I find it extremely odd that when I'm hot, my right wrist sweats. That's it. Just my right wrist. I have no explanation for it at all. Before surgery I wouldn't just sweat, I'd rain from everywhere. It was embarrassing and horrible. Now I'm cold all of the time! The only time I sweat is when I combine weightlifting and cardio together. And when I do sweat in the gym, it's just a little bit off of my forehead. If Io sweat at all during the normal day, I only sweat from my right wrist. So odd to me. If anyone has any idea why it's just my wrist that sweats, hit me up! Hahaha!

Ok, that is all. Just thought I'd throw that out there. Make it quick and to the point. Oh, also I'd like to profess my love for the band Train! The pic is of the song, Bruises, such a good song. Oh and Black Stone Cherry, two bands that I'm really digging right now. I'm late to the party, I know, but two good bands I definitely love to listen too.

I Got Worms!!!

Now that I have your attention, Hi! No, I don't really have worms. And no, I'm not using that name for my worm farm business either. I'm referring to these blue things in my arms and hands that I have never seen before, I think they are called veins. Something I thought I never had before. They are becoming more and more noticeable in these last two months. It's kinda nice to see. I would look at body builders and think, damn that is so gross to see, I'm glad my veins don't stick out like that. Well, I'm probably gonna have to get use to that idea because they are pretty noticeable to me while I'm working out.

There are other things that I'm trying to get use to. One, being that I am a two hundred pounder. Meaning, when I say how much I weigh, I get to say two hundred and blank, blank pounds. When I got out of the four hundreds, it was an easy thing to say I'm three hundred and blank, blank pounds. I've at least have said that in my adult life before. Since turning eighteen, twelve years ago, I have never been able to say I'm two hundred something. It's a lot longer than that, but at least in my years of being an adult, I could never say that. I've been trying to figure out for sure what grade I was in when I was two hundred something and I think it was near seventh grade. I know for sure, I was a three hundred pounder going in to high school at the age of fourteen. So as of yesterday, my weight is two hundred and sixty eight pounds.

Another thing I'm trying to get use to is the fact that I'm eighteen pounds a way from my goal weight when I started this journey. Back in August, when I met with my surgeon, he asked what my goal weight would be at the end of this. I told him I would love to be two hundred and fifty pounds in a year and a half. The year and a half is the time frame that most RNYers tend to see all of their excess weight lost, hoping to never find it again! So when I said two hundred and fifty pounds, I figured that would be a year or so away. So to be eighteen pounds away from my goal weight in less than five months is hard for me to comprehend. During my last doctor visit for my three month check up in January, my surgeon asked me again about what weight I'd like to be at the end of this. I didn't really have an answer for that. I never imagined I'd be two hundred and fifty pounds ever in my life. I did tell him I'd like to be two forty by the summer. He's aid that he wouldn't be surprised if I was two forty by June. So my goal weight by June first is two hundred and forty pounds. I did however make a new goal that I'd like to hit by October twenty sixth and that is to be two hundred and fifteen pounds. I would have to lose fifty three more pounds in seven months. That might be a hard one to reach. If I do reach two fifteen I would be, literally half the man I use to be. Half the man I use to be. (STP style)

Four hundred and thirty one pounds use to be normal to me. Now I'm dealing with a new normal. It's definitely a great thing to deal with. Thanks again for all of the support!

Busy, busy, busy.

Hey everyone, it's been a while. I've kinda stepped away from most things social networking wise. Haven't bothered much with twitter and just been creepin on Facebook. Ha! I just really haven't had the time or energy to post much of anything. I have plenty of ideas, just been too lazy to type them out. Hopefully this will change soon.

There has been lots of things going on with me lately that have been keeping me busy. The main one has been my youngest daughter, Peyton, had started walking! She's only 10 months old, but she has been walking all over the place! My first daughter, Teagan, started walking 2 weeks before her 1st birthday. So this is a little unexpected. Well, it is, but it isn't. My daughters are 18 months apart, so my oldest has taken longer to hit the milestones than her younger sister. We attribute that to the fact that Peyton has Teagan to look up to. It seems and looks like that Peyton is about 2 to 3 months ahead of Teagan in milestones. If you're not a parent and don't know what I mean by milestones, they are basically Sitting on their own, crawling, speaking and walking. There are others, but you get the idea. Peyton sat on her own at 4 months and started crawling 2 weeks later. It was around 6 months for Teagan to sit on her own and she crawled around 8 maybe 9 months. I'm probably wrong on the exacts, but I think I'm close. The point is, this first year that Peyton has been alive has flown by. At the end of next month,April 28th, will be her first birthday. It makes me tear up a little to think about it. Yeah, I'm a puss, so what? I wasn't like this as much with Teagan. Not that I wasn't sad when Teagans first year came to an end. Not at all. I just figured that we would have another baby eventually. I didn't think it would happen so quick like it did, but still. With Peyton, this is probably our last child, At least for a while. And she has grown up so quick, it saddens the shit out of me, her mom too.
So that has been my biggest reason that I haven't been writing blogs or posting statuses to Twitter and Facebook or doing anything much outside of spending time with my family.

Aside from the fact that my youngest girl will be married soon, I've been busy with a few other things. I started a weight loss challenge a few weeks ago. A friend of mine told me of this weight loss site she is on called Reset Nation Project. It's a little site dedicated to health and fitness. And Sara told me that they were doing a fitness challenge for 45 days. The winner will be based on the combined percentage of total weight lost. The prize? An Everlast Heavy bag! I've wanted one ever since I was young! I never owned one before. The closest I have was taking a wood log about 3 feet in length and wrapping it with 3inch foam mattress pad and duct tape. Needless to say, that didn't last too long before I had bloody knuckles and sore hands. I had Sara check to make sure that I could enter seeing how I had gastric bypass and they said, "Bring it on!". I know that I haven't been losing weight as fast as I was in the first 2 to 3 months. Some weeks I might lose nothing and in 3 days I could lose 10lbs. It's very strange. I still felt a little strange about entering a contest to lose weight even though I had a surgery to help me lose weight. So I stepped up my workouts. I figured if I was going to do this, I was going to work extra hard to lose the weight. I started doing 2 a day work outs 4 times a week. Cardio in the morning, lifting in the evening. Well, that lasted the first week of the challenge. Hahahaha. It was easy to do the cardio in the morning, but in the evening there are a ton of people at my gym when I wanted to lift. When I'm at the gym, I like to move fast between each exercise I want to do. Keeps my heart rate up and gets me out of the gym in under an hour. Well, that wasn't happening when I wanted to lift in the evenings. So I stopped doing two a days and started only going in the mornings. The best part about my gym is they got a new heavy bag!! So I started using that and I love it! I loved it so much that last weekend I went and bought on from Dunhams. Haha! I was so impatient that I had to go buy one for my house, Instead of just waiting to see if I would win one from the challenge I entered. I guess in my mind, I'm not guaranteed to win this challenge, so I figured when we got our income tax money back, I'd just go buy one for $50. I love it!! So who knows, if I do win this challenge, I could always sell the one I just bought. Haha, man I'm such a schmuck. To wrap this all in a pretty bow, I weighed in for the challenge two weeks ago at 286lbs. On Friday, I weighed in at 275lbs. 11lbs in two weeks isn't too bad for me. Again, I'm use to seeing that in a week. #RNYProblems, right? Haha. I'm just trying to make this tool (WLS) work for me as fast as I can. I want to enjoy this honeymoon period while it lasts. :) Thank you again for taking the time to read my ramblings. I'm gonna try hard to update this a lot more frequently! Until next time, have a great day everyone!

"Losing weight"

I won't do this often, but I want to now because this is an interesting thought. I'm basically reposting a post I saw on FormerFatDudes.com. I was reading a blog I started a month ago of a guy named Rob Portinga (@mcnee on twitter). He had RNY surgery about 4 years ago and seems to be doing great. I saw a post of his he did early on about the mind set that people, not just WLS patience, have about "losing weight". Take a read and see what you think of it. I think it's a very interesting idea. Also, I might be guest posting on his site in the future. So keep an eye out for it. Thanks and here ya go!

By Rob Portinga
Did you ever get lost as a kid? Or your own kid has gotten lost? Or maybe think back to something as simple as losing your keys, or a wedding ring, or something else of value, how did it feel?

You tend to go in to a sort of panic mode, full of anxiety and stress until what you lost has been found.

We’ve been taught on both a conscious and sub-conscious level since we were kids, if you lose something, you need to get it back. Does that mentality carry over when it comes to “losing” weight?

I hadn’t thought about this at all really, untill it came up in a recent conversation at my support group… but maybe it does?

I’ve joked about how I had lost the same 30-50 pounds over and over and over again, only for them to find me again and bring friends with. I’m sure most of you have had a similar experience.

So maybe there is some sort of mental trigger that kicks in on some sub-conscious level that does contribute to making “losing” weight just a bit harder? And if there is, what can you do about it?

I’ve said before, WLS is for the physical no the mental side of all this. So as part of that mental adjustment we ll need to make, maybe we need to stop thinking of it in terms of “losing” weight. Maybe it’s as simple as checking out the thesaurus. I mean after all, look at the basic definition of lose to begin with; “be deprived of; mislay”, and a secondary definition of “be defeated”. Not a very… positive look on things is it?

Whether you’ve had bariatric surgery or not, we’re not looking to mislay the weight, that right there suggests at some point we’d want it back. I know I don’t. And to be defeated? No… I’m the one looking to do the defeating here. So how about instead of looking to lose weight, maybe it’s as simple as making a mental shift and look at it as “reducing your weight”?

The basic definition of reduce is “make less”, with a secondary definition of “defeat”. I think that’s more accurate as to what I’m looking to.. I’m looking to make my weight less than it was, to defeat my obesity.

I’ve got nothing scientific to back any of this up, but I’m going to try looking at my own situation in this new light, and I’m not saying this alone is going to make some huge difference in my life, but maybe this is just one more simple/minor change I can make as part of the overall picture to help ensure my continued WLS success.

A recipe I found.

Ok, I have a recipe to share that was pretty easy to do and you can do these up on a Sunday night and have them for the week. I might do this every now and again if I find something really good and want to share. I found this recipe on the support group site I'm on and added a few things to it. I made them up last night and had one this morning and they tasted pretty good!! Filled me right up too! I hope you enjoy.

Breakfast Cupcake

Things you'll need:
6 eggs. I used medium eggs.
6 slices of ham
6 turkey Pepperoni slices
2 ounces of Turkey breakfast sausage
1 cup of shredded cheese.
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of pepper
1/8 of a cup of skim milk
Cupcake baking tin
Non stick cooking spray
Small frying pan
Medium mixing bowl


You could add onions, peppers, mushrooms, what ever you like to this. You just have to adjust some of the ingredients to make room. Basically you are making an omelet, so what ever you add to your typical omelet, add in here.

Pre heat the oven to 375F°. Cook up the turkey sausage in the small frying pan until thoroughly cooked. You want to break up the sausage like you would hamburger for sloppy joes. Let cool for a little bit.

In the mixing bowl, put the eggs, cheese, salt, pepper and milk in the bowl and mix. After that, spray the cupcake tin and line all six cupcake slots with a slice of ham. Put them in like you would a cupcake wrapper. Then put a slice of pepperoni in each cupcake slot.

Mix in the turkey sausage with the eggs. Once that is all mixed up, carefully pour the contents into each cup. Maybe using a ladle here would be a good thing. I didn't and it got a little messy. You don't want to go too full because they rise a little during baking. With this recipe, I made enough for 6. If you add more stuff, you might want to make a seventh one, just in case.

Once the oven is heated, stick them on the middle rack for 20 to 25 minutes. The tops will be a little brown when done. Take them out and enjoy with toast!!

I put the recipe how I made it in to the My Fitness Pal app and the picture I have attached tells you the calorie info for one cupcake. I should have taken a better photo to show you what they looked like on a plate, but I'm a guy and I don't do pretty! :) You get the picture though.

FOOD!!

The first week of eating real food was good. I think I over did the tuna, egg and cheese spread though. I made it Saturday and had it all the way until Tuesday. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. As you might have guessed, I got sick of it after a while. Even to this day, I can't really pouch(stomach) it. I then switched to cottage cheese. At least cottage cheese I can still handle. Then I tried lunch meat and string cheese. All of that went good. Never had any problems with it. All while eating that I was drinking my protein drink and taking my vitamins. All was going well!

On thanksgiving day, we tried tilapia and baked potato instead of the usual turkey and mashed potatoes. We weren't having thanksgiving until Saturday, so we wanted to do something different. I barely put away a 1/4 of the filet and about a spoonful of potatoes and I was full. About a 1/3 to a 1/2 cup of food filled me up at this time. It's such a weird feeling seeing only a little bit of food on my plate. Knowing that the little bit I had, was going to fill me up. It's something you have to deal with mentally, still am to this day.

On Saturday, we went to my inlaws house for thanksgiving. This was a true test for me. This was the first time eating in front of anyone since the surgery. Add on the fact that I just started eating real food a week ago, to me it was stressful. Why stressful? Well, one you're with the inlaws. Haha just kidding. For real, I was worried about everyone watching me eat. Not that it's that interesting to watch me, but I just had a surgery that changes everything about how I ate. Draw your own conclusions as to why I thought that. Oh is he going to puke after the first bite? is one bite gonna fill him up? is he eating too much? should he be eating that? I can go on forever, but you get my point. I'm obviously am not the most confident guy in the world, but stuff like that bugs me out. I also know that it's not uncommon to have this feeling. So it's not just me. It truly does help to have a support group of people who have gone through the same thing your going through. Oh and I already know what your thinking, Jodi, so stop shaking your head. ;) If no one was thinking any of that, well good, but I sure as hell was. How embarrassing to throw up in front of everyone? That can cause a little worry in someone. Oh, was the food not good? Did you not chew? Shit, is he dying?? Oh god my floor!! You know, the usual. Well, all of my worries didn't come true. I took a little bit of mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing and turkey. Took my time with it and surprisingly, it all went down good! I actually went back up for seconds! Well, mind you, my seconds added up to most people's mouthfuls. That's the thing with hot foods. It takes what seems like forever to eat that once you get close to finishing, your food is cold. So I've learned to take a little bit at a time now. All in all, my first thanksgiving post surgery went very well and the food was great, the company was great, everything seemed to go pretty well.

I'll leave you with this. Eating real foods since the surgery three months ago has been a challenge, good and bad. It sounds dumb, but you never realize how much your life revolves around food. Everyday you wake up and wonder what you're going to have for breakfast. What you're going to have for lunch. What you're going to have for dinner. That doesn't include snacks and drinks. We all seem to think about it all the time. At least most do. Is that how life is suppose to be? I get it, you need food to survive, but it seems like the subject of food always makes it in our daily conversations. I guess that's just how it is. No real deep thoughts here, just amazed about how food is such an important part of our lives, not just for the obvious reasons either. I never realized it until I had the surgery, that this was so true. Especially when you can't eat the way you were use to eating all of your life. Trying to make your eyes adjust, your brain adjust, to the new concept of eating has been quite a struggle. It seems like it will be a never ending battle, but one I intend on winning!

I hope people are enjoying this blog. If you have anything you ever want to ask, ask it! You can email me at deline199@yahoo.com. Hit me up on twitter at twitter.com/biggiedeline be warned, anything goes on twitter. And find me on Facebook, which most of you have done. I have a pic attached to this blog that showed what I looked like 2 months ago compared to today. It's not much, but there is some differences. Oh and no, those aren't boxer shorts I'm wearing. :) Thanks again for reading!

My first "real" meal.

At my 3 week appointment they let me know I can head to stage 3 for foods. Basically, soft and puréed foods. That was such an amazing thing to hear!i had been craving, for what ever reason, tuna fish with cut up hard boiled eggs and pickles!! Now, pickles are a little tricky. They tell you that you should stay away from foods that have skin on then. I don't exactly know why for sure. My assumption is that the skins are hard to digest and might clog things up. Could be wrong though! So I had to skin the pickles before I can add them to my awesome craving concoction. We only had pickle spears at the house so I also had to take the seeds out as well. I've had some things with the skin on them like beans and corn since my surgery and I have done fine with them. I haven't tried anything else with the skins left on. Maybe with time.

They also had me start up vitamins as well. They all had to be chewable or liquid form for at least the first year. Probably because they can get stuck still, not totally sure. I've taken tylenol as a pill since then and swallowed it whole. Maybe because the multivitamins are so big sometimes. I don't know. I do know that you cant have capsules ever. They have me start 4 vitamin supplements to start. Which is a multivitamin twice a day, calcium citrate twice a day, a B-12 tablet once a day and a dropper full of vitamin D once a week. I say 4 vitamins to start because I might have to take an iron supplement if its too low. They do start iron for women for whatever reason that is. So those are the 4 supplements I have to take for the rest of my life. With the roux en y procedure, you can develop malnutrition very easily. So taking them everyday is a must. Ah if only I would take my own advice. There have been some times where I've gone 3 or more days with out taking them. I don't feel any different, but I have to get on my ass to take them. Taking pills can be such a pain in the ass sometimes, which I'm sure most can relate. Writing this right now, I realized I need to take them. So if you ever decide to go the route I have taken and get this surgery, be prepared to take those 4 or five supplements a day plus a protein powder as well, for the rest of your life. I should take stock in a supplement company.

After I got home from my appointment, Jodi and I decided to head up to Gaylord (a town 30 minutes north of us) to do some christmas shopping for the girls. Plus I had to get my vitamins as well. So off to Walmart we go! We decided to stop to some other shops up there as well and by the time we got out of those shops we got a phone call from a couple we knew that lived in Gaylord (Kirkie and Tommy) and a friend (Derek) to see if we wanted to have dinner. We weren't sure if we wanted to go because, what the hell was I gonna eat? At this time, no one knew I had surgery, kind of a dirty secret if you will. So it was gonna look bad when everyone else is eating and I was the only one not. They decided on going to BC pizza because it had a play room for the kids. We said sure and off we went.

Now, this was the first time I was ever eating food since the surgery. Real food that is. I wasn't sure if BC pizza offered any soups or chili that I could eat. Well come to find out, they pretty much offered either pizza, wings or bread sticks. What the hell was I thinking. I don't know why I thought they might offer some kind of soup. And as of this point, I couldn't have salad. I do have to stop right here, though. My surgeon said I should only eat soft foods or puréed foods to start out with. Well, I figured if Puréeing your food was an option, then chewing it up really finely would work as well! I had all but one of my teeth, that should work! After all, they said I can have thanksgiving dinner in a week, why can't I have chicken chewed up a thousand times now?? That was my reasoning for ordering the BBQ chicken wings.

I was kind of dreading sitting at the same table as everyone else. I didn't know how to bring up the fact that, yeah, I lied to you guys about being ok and why I've been losing weight and oh by the way I had my guys rearranged 3 weeks ago. After thinking about it, I figured if the subject got brought up as to why I was taking for ever to Chew my food, I would let them in on the secret. Well when we got there, I didn't have to worry about it at all. There were a shit ton of kids in the play area and they were all at different booths inside the play area. So we didn't have to sit with each other and I didn't have to say anything about my surgery. Of course now I was disappointed because I talked myself in to spilling my guts (ha) about the surgery, now I didn't have the chance. It was so busy in there that there wasn't a real opportunity to come out with it.

So we ordered our food and as we were waiting we watched our oldest daughter play around. It was nice to see her run around and get to hang with kids around her size and age. Granted all the other kids were 7 years older than her and she was only 2, (We are raising a Hulk baby) but she seemed to have fun!

The food can and I got scared as shit to start eating. This was going to be my first "real" meal since surgery, what was going to happen? Another thing here, apparently I'm an idiot and didn't realize that the wings were deep fried, kind of a big no no for WLS (weight loss surgery) patience. I don't know what I was thinking. Deep friend is a no no because of all the fat, it can cause a dumping syndrome. Something I cared not to have in public, ever. Plus, some people cant stand to have chicken after the surgery. it makes them throw up. So i had that running threw my head as well!! So I started out taking a small bite, I mean smaller than what my daughter was taking. ( which doesn't mean much if you've ever seen her eat) The first bite went ok. I chewed that bitch up 30 times just like they said and swallowed. Hey, I'm ok! Sweet! Waited a minute to take my next bite. Chewed it 30 times, swallowed. Holy shit, I'M EATING!!! Hell yeah!!!! I did it again, chewed it up, then swallowed. My god, I'M THE KING OF THE WORLD!!!!!! And then it hit me, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudge!!!! Only I didn't say fudge. Actually I didn't say anything, but my face did the talking. I got this god awful pain in my new pouch. Like someone sucker punched me there. It was a new feeling I haven't experienced before. I was FULL!!!! Off of two little chicken wings!!! I didn't clean them like I use to, got most of the meat that was easy to take off. Still, I was funking full!! A little too full actually. Man, I think I over did it. I thought, no way am I going to puke this up. That shit was gonna hurt!! Breath dude, just breath. i was damn near doing a Lamaze course inside of BC pizza. I tired not to let anyone know what was going on. I tried to remain cool, but I needed out of there. Thank god my kid started acting up and I had to take her to the car. That was the only time that I found it acceptable for her to start acting like a shit head. She saved daddy from an embarrassing episode. So I took her out to the car where she cried the whole time and I tried to breath through the pain. Eventually the pain went away and I started to feel better. We went back inside and I played it off cool. We said our goodbyes and headed off to shop at Walmart. Thank god because I needed to work off the food I just ate! :)

Memory is shot.

That pic was me my senior year of high school. Sexy beast, no?? On the Covino and Rich show, they wanted the listeners to change their Facebook and twitter pics and use your senior yearbook photo. Not sure exactly why because I'm about a month behind on the show, but I did it anyways. THEY SAY JUMP, I SAY HOW HIGH SIR!!!!! So since I didn't have a pic in mind for this blog, I used it here too.

Doing this blog has been a great outlet, not only to let everyone in on what has been going on, but something I can go back and look on to see how far I've come. The bad thing is, I'm writing this blog from memory. I should have taken better notes or at least write a blog as things have been happening. I was doing that for a little bit, but then stopped. The bad thing about writing from memory is that sometimes you get stuff wrong. Unless your awesome and have a stellar memory, which I do not. So when I said on my second to last blog that I only lost 12lbs in the first 3 weeks, I was wrong. I had to do some looking back for my first experience on what I ate for the first time after my 3 week check up and I found out I wrote I lost 27lbs since surgery on the 8th of November. Which could be right, but here's the thing, I don't remember what weight that number was from.

On your last appointment before surgery, which is two weeks before, they take your picture and write down the weight you are at. Well, just like any doctors office scale, it's always wrong, right? I mean, they add like 20lbs to the scale to make you think your fatter than you really are. That was always my assumption. :) I knew what I roughly weighed nekkid, I weighed myself in the morning before my appointment. By my scale, if I remember correctly, I weighed 388lbs. When I got to the doctors office, I weighed 396lbs. So I never really paid that much attention to their number because it was always higher than what my number was. Granted, I was wearing a size 4xl tshirt, size 52 pant, socks and underwear, but still, a almost 10lbs weight gain from my morning weigh in??!! C'mon!
So now I can't remember what the 27lbs was from. Either 396lbs or 388lbs OR was it from 377lbs, which is what I weighed the day I left the hospital after surgery!??!

I do know this, I weighed 431lbs on June 23rd 2012. As of this moment, well, as of yesterday at 5:23 am on February 1st, 2013 I weighed 287lbs. That's 144lbs lost in roughly 8 months. To me, it seems like a lot, but then I think that it's not that much. I say that because when I started being serious about losing weight in the beginning of July I was doing great, then in August, into september, I slacked off a bit an then got back on track in October. I took a few months off and on January 1st I've been going to the gym 4 to 5 days a week. So, in my mind set, I should have lost more weight than what I have. BUT, that's how I am with myself. I'm always hard on myself and I know that can be damaging. I often wonder if that's why I got so big. Being hard on myself mentally, making myself feel like shit all the time, that's probably why I always went towards food. Food was always there when I needed it. Food wasn't a stuck up bitch who would reject you if you were fat. Food loves you no matter how big you are. Food would always be there at 2am on a Saturday night, waiting for you to turn the light on. Ah, who the hell am i kidding, food would be there every night at 2am for that matter, food was never picky. I was food's bitch.

Not anymore! Fuck you food!! You're not the boss of me!! I have a wife and two little girls who are!!! Yeah, see!! Screw you food!

Wow, that took a weird turn that I wasn't expecting. So anyways, my point to all of this is that I need to write stuff down. Keep better logs of what is going on. Everyone should do that. Especially if your losing weight. Write down how much you weigh every week. Take pictures of yourself. Above all else, don't be so damn hard on yourself. There are a shit ton of people who can do that to you. Don't let yourself be that way. You know why? At the end of the night, you always have yourself. Everyone else can fuck off.

My wife.

This post is a little off my normal topic, but I wanted to share. My wife has been an awesome supporter of mine for 4+ years. Especially since my decision to go through with gastric bypass surgery. Having her help me has been great motivation to not fail and disappoint. Sometime she can be a pain in the ass, but that's what women are there for. :D

In the last three years of our marriage, we've had two beautiful daughters. Being pregnant, damn near back to back, hasn't been easy on her and she has gained a little weight from it. I didn't think she looked bad, but in her mind, she wasn't happy where she was at. Plus, having the stress to be a stay at home mom and hardly ever go out didn't help. She pretty much takes care of everything around the house and puts the girls and I first on her list.

Well I'm happy to say she finally has been thinking of herself lately and has started to watch more of what she's been eating. I know it's been hard. Especially living with a dude who has been dropping weight like there's no tomorrow. I feel bad when I use to tell her I dropped 5 pounds in one day. She has been so diligent in watching her calories and not eating junk, this last month, that she has lost 11lbs!!! I'm so proud of her!!!! Its only a start to where she wants to be, but at least shes trying!! She has been working hard on this and I just want her to know that it hasn't gone unnoticed! I really wish she could goto the gym with me, but I know that's hard to do since we have no one to watch the kids. Once the weather gets better, we will start walking out side with the kids. Plus we plan to get bikes and start going for family bike rides.

My main point, I just want to let her know that she has been the single most awesome person in my life. I don't say it enough to her and I know that is wrong of me. She doesn't get the credit she deserves and I feel bad for that. I love the fact that she is down to earth and doesn't always have to fit in the trends as some women do. When she wants to though, she steps it up and always looks hot for me. I just want to say, I love you Jodi!! Thanks for being a great wife and an awesome mom to our kids. Don't ever forget that!

Week 2, stage 2.

After getting my drain taken out, I get to FINALLY have....................cream of chicken soup!!!! Drained of course. I know, you're jealous! It has to be drained because there are small pieces of chicken in it that could get stuck in the opening of my new pouch. Starting the stage two diet meant that I could have a little more flavor in my diet. Everything still had to be a liquid for the most part, but at least I could have more texture if you want to call it that. I mainly ate cream soups, sugar free pudding, sugar free jello, sugar free popsicles, light yogurt and protein drinks. You could have cream of wheat and applesauce, but I didn't like that stuff before surgery, sure as hell wasn't going to try it after and risk puking it back up! So I stuck to what I knew best. It was rough, but at least it was something.

Starting stage two also meant that I need to take things really slow. Meaning, you are suppose to take a half hour to eat 1/3 cup of food. Go ahead, try that. Go from eating 1/3 cup of food in one SWALLOW to taking a half hour to eat at ONE SITTING. Rough. So my first meal was cream of chicken soup and it took me around 10 to 15 minutes to finish. I basically tried to just Savor the flavor when I ate. Which, I guess is something we all should do, but I reeeeaaaalllly savored the flavor. Almost like Over exaggerated "eating" (more like slurping) my food. I tried to go slow, just for the fact that i wasn't sure how things were going to go. I wasn't sure if my new pouch was going to be pissed at me for cutting him up or not. I had no clue. So after 15 minutes, I was done and full. I didn't have any problems finishing it that "fast". I asked the group that I'm a part of and they said everyone is different and that once I get to eating "real" food, the half hour to an hour to eat applies more. Makes sense.

I'm thankful my tastes haven't changed all that much since the surgery. With Roux en y surgery, there is a possibility that your taste buds could change and some foods you once loved, now can't stand. The only thing I've found that tastes weird is milk and until recently, water. Milk has this god awful nasty after taste that I can't seem to shake. I use to love milk and was never bothered by the taste. I wonder if I'm lactose intolerant now because if I drink too much milk, it does a number on my system. That is another side effect from the surgery. you can become lactose intolerant. Could be coincidence. That could also be why the protein drinks I once loved, now sicken me to the core. I was excited to have them when I started stage two because you have to get at least 80 grams of protein a day. If you don't, you risk losing muscle mass and hair. I don't want to look like a bald bag of bones after all is said and done!! Ha! Ok, not really, but protein is important for a lot of things, so everyone should get an adequate amount in their diet. For gastric bypass patients, it's really important because we can't eat as much as others can. So we use the drinks to supplement. Well, I even tried switching brands and that didn't help the taste. The only thing I haven't tried is just taking a scoop of protein powder with water and mixing that up. I tried it before surgery and it about made me throw up. So I toughed it out and drank my drinks as best I could. I've found now, 3 months later if I take a half of a banana (thank you Gwen Stefani for helping me spell bananas), one scoop of protein powder, cup of milk and a cup of ice, blend until smooth, that's the only way I can drink my protein now.

After having surgery,(well for everyone really) it's important you get enough fluid in you or risk becoming dehydrated. They recommend you get at least 80 ounces a day. I now try and get a gallon of water a day. I say now because in the beginning, I didn't try hard enough and had a slight complication. To me, it's slight now, at the time I was scared shitless! After two weeks of being out of the hospital I was right back in it. Sunday morning I woke up and went to the bathroom and noticed my pee smelled really bad. Kinda like ammonia. I didn't think anything of it. About an hour later I felt like I had to pee again. Not normal to me. So I tried and during the whole time it burned as I was going. I only went a little bit and at the end, blood came out. I freaked out for a bit. I never peed blood in my life. Totally new to me. I thought maybe it was a fluke. So I left it at that. About another hour passed and the same thing happened only more came out. Finally after like an hour of deciding, I went to the ER. I just didn't want to be there and I didn't want to spend more money at a hospital. Those were my only two reasons why I didn't go sooner. Haha. So I get there, pee in a cup, sit and wait, only for them to tell me it might be an infection, might not. might be a kidney stone, might not. Sweet. So they gave my some antibiotics and off I went. I got home and realized I can't take pills whole because of the surgery. So I had to crush the pills up and put them in my cream of chicken soup. Big fricken mistake right there!! You ever tried crushed up pills that weren't meant to be crushed up?? The worst taste ever in your mouth. A taste that cream of chicken soup can't hide!!!! I did that once. After that I crushed them up and mixed it with an ounce of flavored water. Wasn't that bad because it was a quick shot compared to a long lasting meal. I only did that for 4 days out of the 10 i was suppose to do and stopped. Everything was better after the fourth day. Not that it was the right thing to do, but I couldn't handle the taste anymore. My doctor wanted me to go get a CT scan and do some other tests, but I didn't. This stuff wasn't cheap! Plus I felt a lot better, so I left it alone. I don't really know what happened. Either I had a bladder infection from the catheter during surgery and the antibiotics cleared it up or I had a kidney stone that was caused by not drinking enough fluid and I passed it. So ever since then, I try to get at least a gallon of water in me a day. I don't want to go through that again.

I went back to work after being off for a week and a half. It wasn't too bad, but the not bring able to lift 15lbs thing was killing me. Everything I use at work Is well over 15lbs. A case of pop/soda is 30lbs. My hand cart weighs at least 20lbs. So I was really limited on what I could do. Basically sit in the truck and stock the snack machines. I had to wait until my third week of being out of surgery was over before I could lift anything heavy. Going back to work wasn't bad. I felt ok. My energy was alright, but not great. I wasn't eating much and not taking vitamins yet, so that was to be expected. Even being next to the temptations(no, not the Motown group) wasn't that bad. I wasn't hungry, so I never had the feeling of wanting any of the snacks I work with. Which was great by the way! I was worried about that.

Thursday the 15th of November rolled around and I got the ok to go back to work at normal capacity. Which was a relief that I didn't have to worry about picking stuff up and it being too heavy anymore. When I got out of surgery I weighed 377lbs and stayed that weight for a whole week. When I weighed myself at the doctors office, I weighed 365lbs. So in 3 weeks I only lost 12lbs. I could deal with that. That wasn't too bad considering I haven't been able to work out the whole time. The only exercise I was doing was walking a mile a day. I was happy for the most part. I still had bouts of depression that I was dealing with. Overall, I felt good and was happy with my new life. After I got out of the doctors office, I was really happy. Reason being? Thanksgiving was only a week a way!! Oh yeah, I got cleared to eat real food!!!!! Hell yeah!! I'll tell you more next week. Thank you all again for the amazing support!! Truly humbling! Thank you!! I added a photo of me that I use to like. Not because I'm holding my daughter by her ankle, but because I thought I looked good compared to what I was before. That was taken in August of 2012. I weighed 415lbs then.

Week one after surgery.

The first week after surgery was a long week. When I woke up from surgery, I was pretty much back asleep. I saw my wife, sister inlaw and my baby for what seemed like only minutes and then they were gone. I don't blame them either. The nurses told them it would be about a 2 hour surgery and then they could see me probably around 1 o'clock and they didn't see me until around 5pm . That I know of, there weren't any complications during surgery, but I guess they didn't have a bed for me and they were trying to get my pain and breathing under control. So when they left, I went back to sleep. It's kinda shitty sleeping on your back if you didn't already know that. You have to do that for the first week at least. When you get out of surgery, they put in a drain tube and for whatever reason, you have to sleep on your back. Probably so you don't break the staples on your pouch or rip one of the incisions open. Plus, you have to worry about this tube that is coming out of you with a ball on the other end. I had 5 incision marks across my belly forming a line just above my belly button. They all looked ok except for the one on my left side. That one hurt the most and I looked like they tucked all my skin in the incision because I had a pretty big dent on my left side. I don't know how else to describe it, but there was an actual dent in my body. They said it could be from the stitches. They might have sewn more layers of skin together on that side, I don't know. It doesn't look that bad now, so I'm fine with it.

That first night in the hospital was pretty shitty. I'd only sleep for 2 hours tops. Wake up, get poked for either a blood draw or medicine and then go back to sleep. I had a room mate, which was very interesting. The guy had back surgery and broke out with a 103F degree fever while he was staying there. He was probably in his 60s. I felt bad for him. Seemed like a nice guy, but he complained a lot that he was going to die. I heard EVERYTHING that the guy did. And I do mean EVERYTHING. I didn't talk much to him. Didn't want to get too close, ya know? Probably for the fact that if he did die, I didn't want to have to get his wife flowers. What?? Surgery is expensive! I couldn't waste more money on something else, let alone flowers for someone I didn't know! I just had my insides rearranged, I ain't got time for that! I'm of course just kidding and I would have bought her a nice floral arrangement for what ever 5.99 could buy. Ok, maybe 10.99, but I'd keep the receipt for tax purposes!! That I know of, he didn't die and went home the day after me. There, a happy ending for the guy.

The next morning after surgery, the nurse had me try walking around so I didn't get any blood clots in my system. They really should make hospital gowns like robes. Just throwing that out there. Oh and more manly colors too! So I took my floral pattern ass out in to the hallways. The nurse, whose name was joe, as in a male nurse, not Bobby Jo, which would imply a female nurse, walked with me. They probably figured if I was gonna fall down, this poor guy was gonna catch me. It was funny because he seemed pretty unsure the whole time we walked. I felt good though, no real uncomfortable pain that a little breathing couldn't help. I actually walked a pretty good distance. Oh, did I mention I had a god awful catheter in? I was never use to having anything dangling between my knees before until now! Haha! It's definitely weird having one of those in. Thankfully I wasn't awake when they put it in, but I was when he ripped it out of me!! I hope to never in my life have one of those in me again. I walked at least three times a day which is what they wanted. Basically I walked and slept the day and a half I was there.i was doing very well and they gave me the ok to go home on Sunday. I got to shower Saturday night which felt great! It's very weird showering with drain tube coming out of the middle of your abdomen. It didn't hurt having it there, but one time when I was showering I hit it and pulled it out a little bit. They give you a oxygen type tube to clip the drain ball to and have it hang around your neck.

On Sunday I left the hospital and came home. What a relief! It was nice to be home and see my family. It felt great to get kinda back into the swing of things even though my wife was yelling at me for over doing it. The doctor told me to not lift over 15lbs, something that was incredible hard to follow. 15lbs is not a lot of weight at all! My youngest daughter is 19lbs so she was "off limits" to pick up. Well, I didn't quite listen all the time. I did pick my daughters up once in a while because I missed hanging on to them. Plus I felt extremely bad that my wife had to do EVERYTHING by herself with no help from anyone. For a dude who can just about lift up anything (within reason), Not be able to lift up his 6 month old daughter, That truly made me feel like shit. Jodi does so much around the house with me helping a little bit, that after my surgery she was doing everything by herself now. Which, I guess was no different than normal, so I guess I shouldn't have felt that bad. Haha! So, I did over due it a couple of times, but it never had any affect on my incisions or my new pouch. So I don't think I did such a bad thing. Of course, everyone is different, so listen to your doctor, said the hypocrite.

During my stay in the hospital, I lived off of ice chips. Water, even after I got home tasted like a creamy watery mix that was absolutely hard to take. When I got home I had only crystal light, sugar free Popsicles and chicken broth to "eat" for the first week. I could "eat" as much as I wanted of those items. For the first week, you are on a clear liquid diet until your drain is taken out. I'm assuming so my little pouch could heal. It wasn't too bad for the first few days, but when Jodi made dinners, man the smells were so great! I never felt hungry though. I did take some regular food and chew it up, but then spit it out afterwards. I'm not really proud to say that, but for having nothing but clear liquid in your system for a week, there's nothing better then having a food taste in your mouth. Jodi would look at me like I was crazy, but she was only worried I would mess this surgery up. Im not crazy and my nurse at the surgery center said that it was pretty normal to do. She just said do not swallow it, which I never did. I was too scared to even think about swallowing it. It was just great to chew something other than ice.

On the Friday after my surgery, I had my drain taken out. What a weird feeling that was. Writing this, I can still feel it bring pulled out of me. It felt like my stomach just did a flip when she pulled this 10 inch drain out of me. So gross!! It didn't hurt though. I was bummed out because I thought she was going to have to stick me with a needle. I have now had my fair share of needles that I could scream. Especially after the hour of the nurses trying to get an IV started before surgery. Oh and the half hour of them trying to get a new one started Saturday night after my line went bad. Pretty much done with needles, but I know I still have blood draws todo after a few months. Oh well. So I was glad that all she had to do was snip a stitch and pull! After that I got the ok to progress to stage 2 diet which I will update next week.

This was getting a little long so I want to cut this short and I will update this every week until I run out of things to talk about. Thank you all for the support and for taking the time to read this little blog! It means so much to me, I'm deeply humbled by it. Have a great day everyone!