"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.