Stressed But Happy

Hodge Podge post here, kiddos.

> The unfill was the best damn thing I ever did. (Besides getting the LapBand in the first place, of course.) I have not had one stuck episode since, and I'm feeling light and free. IT IS WONDERFUL. I'm allowing myself to check the scale one time per week, which is a good deal of improvement over checking it once a day, or three times a day, whatever the case may be. And when I checked it this week, I was down almost 3 pounds from before. It seems counter-intuitive that I'm losing weight while eating more, but of course there are all kinds of reasons I can attribute to it. (i.e. being able to eat better quality foods like proteins again, not scarfing down candy bars and cookies because I'm hungry and they're the only things that will go down without incident, eating more calories so my body doesn't think I'm starving and hold on to all the fat, and also being able to eat a decent meal so that my body {and my brain} both feel more satisfied after a meal so I don't get the urge to snack quite as much.) All in all, I'm very happy with the choices I've made and I'm excited to see how this all plays out at the end of the month.

>We're moving at the end of May. It totally sucks now that I'm not used to doing it every year.

When I was growing up, I used to joke that my family's idea of spring cleaning was to pack everything up and move to a different house. We moved A LOT. Every year, sometimes. I went to several elementary schools, but somehow managed to stay in the same school throughout middle and high school. (Not the same house, mind you, but the same school district.) Even though, for my Freshman year of high school I technically didn't live in the school district and had to literally ride the "short bus" to and from. I had to pay several dollars a day (out of my own money once I got a job at 14 1/2) to take a county public transportation system bus to school. Sophomore year, though, we moved and were once again back in my old school district.

Within a month of graduation, I "chose" to move out of my mom and step-dad's house and moved in with my grandparents. Less than a year after that, I got an apartment with a co-worker. After a year there, I moved in with my Dad and Bonus Mom for a few months until I moved into my dorm at the University of Cincinnati. A couple years later, it was out of the dorm and into an apartment with my BFF. Then after that year's lease was up, a different apartment with the same BFF. Then I met The Hubs.

After the lease was up on the apartment with the BFF, The Hubs and I moved in together. That was in 2007, and we've lived in the same place ever since. It has been so weird to live in one place for an extended period of time. I hate where we live, but at the same time, I'm incredibly sentimental about it being our apartment of firsts. Our first apartment together, the place we came home to after our wedding and honeymoon, the place we brought Logan home to, etc. It's sad.

What is also sad? The collected masses of junk that we've accumulated over the past six years. Moving for one person was a breeze compared to moving for three. That picture above was most of the stuff pulled out of our linen closet, which, ironically contained very little "linen". I threw away two bags full of expired medicine and random gark, and now all of that junk is scattered about my living room floor in sort-of-sorted piles. I didn't have the energy to do much more than that last night. 

I did find a little treasure in all the trash. This is my baby ring from when I was probably three or four years old. If you squint really hard you can see a bit of diamond, and there's probably about $5 worth of gold in the darn thing, but I love it. Please ignore the dirty and chewed off fingernails. I still haven't kicked that habit.

Who wants to come to my house and pack everything up this weekend? Pweety pweeease? (As Logan would say.) I'll love you forever and share my wine...

A Time To Heal

Remember last week's five pound gain and the frustration that went along with it? Yesterday I was finally able to get to the office for my unfill.

If you'll remember, I got a 1.0 cc fill a little over two weeks ago (on April 6th) wherein I couldn't even get water down for most of that weekend. Five days later, I went in for a slight unfill of 0.5 cc. I was afraid to take the whole 1.0 cc out because I didn't want to have paid for nothing, and I felt like I truly needed a fill at the time. 

Suffice it to say that 0.5 cc was not enough. I was PBing at almost every meal. I was unable to eat any sort of meat. I could get down liquids and most soft/mushy foods, but I'm not a person who can live like that for extended periods of time (And you shouldn't have to with the band. That's not how it's supposed to work.) So I would keep trying the meat - small bites, chewchewchew, eat slowly, and still get stuck and PB. Almost every time. So what was happening is that my band/stomach/pouch/esophagus were constantly inflamed and angry with me because they were never getting a chance to heal from all the PBing I was doing. 

So like I said in my previous post, I went into this appointment yesterday with a plan: unfill A LOT and stay that way for a month to allow my body to heal. Fortunately, Kim wholeheartedly agreed with my plan. Unfortunately, Kim was the one who was going to perform my unfill. 

OH. MY. JEEBUS. 

But I'll get to that in a second. 

According to their numbers (which I don't agree with) I had 8.75 cc in my band. My calculation is that I actually had 10 cc yesterday before the unfill. But anyway, we were going off of her numbers, so I told her that I'd be okay with her taking half out. She agreed to take 4 cc out of my band and thought it was a very good idea to give myself a month to heal at that level. 

And then, out came the needle(s). 

Kim's first several fills with me were painless. One stick and in and out in a matter of seconds. Then something happened and she just wasn't getting it right. Several sticks and lots of mini pokes while the needle was in my stomach, but not in my port. And lots of alarm-raising scraping of the plastic sides of my port. Trust me, that feeling is NOT something I wish to repeat. And yet, every time I see Kim, I get to repeat it. 

For my first unfill (on 4/10), she had to stick me twice, and did the zillion-little-sticks thing and scraping-the-plastic thing for a bit before she was finally able to get in my port.

I noticed afterward that she was sticking me right above my port scar each time that she was having difficulty. Previously, when she (and Kristina) were able to get my port in one stick, the spot was right under my port scar. So, hoping to not have to go through this un-fun process, I mentioned this to her. Luckily, she's a nice, fun lady and didn't take this as me trying to tell her how to do her job. She seemed really surprised and felt around for my port again. She kept saying that it felt like it was right above the scar, and I kept telling her that all I knew was that when they're successful, the sticks are right under the scar. 

She stuck me once - and got nothing. A zillion little sticks and scrapes later, and she told me I could put my feet down (they have you lift your legs a couple inches to make the port easier to find) and rest for a minute. Raising your feet a few inches off the table for a sustained period of time is a surprisingly tough workout! 

She stuck me twice - and got nothing. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. At one point, she told me to relax and we were talking, and I didn't realize that she hadn't actually taken the needle out of my stomach. I looked down as we were chatting away, and there it was, just poking out of my body (with her holding on to it, of course). Strange. After resting for another minute or so, she tried again. Still nothing. 

She stuck me three times - and got something. Unfortunately, the something that she got was the plastic side of my port. She jammed the needle right into the damn thing! After pulling on the syringe and not getting any liquid, she realized that it wasn't in the right spot and went back to her usual practice of a zillion little sticks and a zillion little scrapes. 

Eventually, she found the damn thing and I (very literally) breathed a sigh of relief. She took out 4 cc, and all of a sudden I started feeling a really painful pinch in the area. I kept saying "Ow! Ouch! What are you doing?!" and she looked at me like I was crazy. Turns out, what she was doing was pulling the needle out of my port and stomach. The BENT needle. Ask me how it feels to have a bent needle pulled out of you. Go ahead. 

IT FUCKING HURTS. 

Apparently, when she jammed the damn thing into the side of my port, she did it hard enough to bend about a quarter of an inch of the tip of the needle. After she pulled it out, she kind of looked at it, then looked at me, and gave me this sheepish little "oopsie!" kind of smile. 

Oopsie, my ass. 

She did have one small shard of brilliance, though. After she shredded my insides pulled out the needle, she circled the blood spot with a pen and asked me for my phone so she could take a picture of the "successful" spot. Successful here is a VERY relative term. But at least she'll have a picture to go off of if she ever touches my port again. Which I'm very doubtful of, since I think I'd have better success if I gave my two-year-old a syringe and said, "go at it!"

 

You can see two teeny tiny pokes very close to each other at the top, which are from 10 days ago. Then the three other pokes are from her blindly playing pin the tail on the port yesterday. You can see how the one on the bottom is bigger than the others - that's because of the bent needle. And the redness to the right is what happens when you give me a band aid. Is anyone else "allergic" to the adhesive?

And as a side note - I'm so glad I'm a good healer! Look at that pretty scar! :-)

In any event, I feel so much better after having 4 cc taken out. I haven't had any trouble eating or drinking, and it almost felt "weird" to me to not get stuck. It's amazing how, even though it's so uncomfortable and unpleasant, you can get used to a feeling like that so easily. 

For now, I'm taking a month off of fills and weigh-ins. And I'm feeling very good about that.  

Ask and ye shall receive...

Apparently I intrigued a couple of you (hi Cheri and Frances!) with my frog-making capabilities. So I borrowed an extra set of hands and had my lovely husband tape it for you! A couple of things - I was thinking earlier about it and it kind of looks like an ostrich or snake, too. So that's why you hear me emulate those animals (to the best of my ability - ha!) in the video.

I honestly have no recollection of learning this, and yet, of all the things that could take up space in my brain, this stuck. And as a side note: I showed Logan that I could do this the other night and now he requests the frog and various other animals. It's really hard to explain to a two-year-old that I know how to make a frog with my hands but can't make a cow, piggie, or sheep.

Enjoy! (ribbit ribbit)

Trying Something New

Less at Less of Less turned me on to Friend Makin' Monday, which is put on by Kenlie at All The Weigh. It's a series of questions posted every Monday that a blogger answers and then links back to in the comments on All The Weigh. This week's fill-in-the-blank style tickled my fancy, so here we go:

I like romantic comedies.

I don’t like movies that make me cry. Even in the "good" way. 

I love my husband and son. A shocking, surprising, and unbelievable amount. 

I dream of travelling to every state in the union. 

I wonder if this weight loss thing will ever really click for me. 

I know how to fold my hands into the shape of a frog's face. If I had three hands, I'd take a picture to prove it. 

I went to Austria for 10 days during my sophomore year in high school.

I think about everything way too much. 

I plan to become an elementary school teacher. 

I regret everything related to my first go-round of college. 

I do night-night time with my son every other night. It's my absolute favorite time of the day.

I drink amaretto sours or moscato when I'm in the mood to imbibe. 

I wish on falling stars, repeating numbers on the clock, necklace clasps that have turned to the pendant, wishbones, loose eyelashes, and birthday candles. Two wishes if the clasp on my wishbone necklace turns to the front. 

I am a music lover. 

I am not an adventurous eater. 

I need to stop being lazy. 

I hope the earth doesn't implode (either by natural or man-made causes) before my kid has a long, full life. 

I want a decent job for my husband in his chosen field. 

I sometimes sit in the bathtub with the hottest water I can stand pouring down on me from the shower and just cry. 

I always find the positive. Eventually. 

I can crochet. 

I cannot dive head first into water. 

I avoid people I owe work assignments to. 

I will finish my freaking degree, for once and for all. 

Wasn't that fun? If you want, you can participate in Friend Makin' Monday by answering all the questions on your own blog and then returning to All The Weigh to leave your blog link in the comments for others to check out. 

TTT - Pet Peeve Edition

So thanks to the lovely (and pregnant with a sassy baby girl) Laura Belle, we've got Ten Things Thursday - wherein I get to cheat and still feel like a productive blogger. Love it!

I've been stressed lately, which usually makes annoying things stand out as even more annoying than they would be on a regular basis. So it's not very hard for me to come up with a Ten Things Thursday full of things that annoy me. Here goes, in no particular order:

{1} People who "pimp" out their babies on Facebook for "I'm the cutest baby in the whole, wide world" contest votes. I don't care how much I like you, or how cute your baby is - I'm not going to go vote so that he/she can "beat out" other one-year-olds for the title. Quit asking me to!

{2} People who drive on the shoulder when traffic is stopped on the highway. Unless someone in your car is having a baby or a heart attack, get your ass back in line and wait like the rest of us! 

{3} People over the age of eight who shuffle their feet when they walk. For some reason, that irks the crap out of me. Pick up your feet, it's not that hard!

{4} People who say/post things (on FB usually) to fish for attention. There's one girl on my friends list who does this constantly with status updates like, "Heading to Children's with DS", or "OMG, I am so stressed out and I just don't think I can take any more of this!", which comes off to me like you just want somebody to ask what's wrong with you and give you sympathy/attention. 

{5} My husband, who, after putting The Kid to bed last night promptly fell asleep in his clothes with the lights on in our bedroom. I came in and laid down while checking blogs and FB on my phone. After about half an hour, I woke him up to tell him that he needed to set his alarm because I was going to bed. He says, "You're going to bed?! I thought we were going to talk about X,Y, and Z?!" Um, yeah. We were going to talk about those things before you spent the past hour passed out. Now it's WAY past my bedtime! Gah. Men. 

{6} The fact that a fricking salad costs me eight dollars at Panera. Or anywhere else for that matter. Who in the world decided that it was fair to charge $8 - $12 for a few ounces of chicken and a bunch of lettuce? How many bags of lettuce could I buy at the store for that money?! Ugh. Also, {6A} that I can't buy Panera's Honey Tangerine dressing in the store and there doesn't seem to be anything similar on the market. I need it in my life and don't want to pay $8.08 every time I feel the craving. 

{7} Being on the weight loss teeter-totter. I really can't handle all this bouncing around. I just want to be able to post some sort of loss consistently. I am beyond frustrated by this. 

{8} That people/society seem to be in a pretty big hurry for MY son to grow up. He should have been off the bottle the second he turned one (he is off the bottle, but it was more like 15 months when we kicked the habit completely - gasp!). He should be off the pacifier by now (we just did this one a few weeks ago, at 27 months - gasp!). He should be potty trained by now (we're not even close to trying this and I'm not even remotely concerned about it - gasp!). He should be sleeping in a "real" bed by now (my kid likes his crib and I like the safety of it. he's not moving out of it any time soon - gasp!). Stop it! Stop trying to rush my kid into being an adult! This time is already flying like crazy, and I don't feel the need to pressure myself, my family, or my freaking two-year-old into thinking that he's falling behind already. He has been a person for all of two years, for jeebus' sake. Give the kid a break and let him (and me) enjoy being a baby for the short time it lasts. [End Mama Bear rant.]

{9} That my grocery store NEVER has enough lines open. I went grocery shopping last night. Two lanes open - that's all. Srsly? Ugh. 

{10} That money makes the world go 'round and my dreams of being an intrepid world traveller/travel show host/owner of my own far away island where I can run naked on my own damn beach (in slow motion, Baywatch style) and get sand in unspeakable places will never happen. Oops, did I say too much?

Over it.

Last Week: 239.6 lb
This Week: 244.6 lb
Gain: 5.0 lb

And I'm over it.

Especially over it when I gained back five freaking pounds and yet, I'm still PBing at almost every fucking meal.

I can't eat "normal" foods. I can't live on protein shakes.

I'm calling for a serious unfill today. I want it out. Everything I just got and more. 2cc, 3cc, I don't care at this point. I just want to get to a point where I know for sure that I'm not going to be PBing on anything.

And I am going to stay that way for a month. And during that month, I'm not going to weigh in. The weigh ins have just become something I dread, and something that makes me feel like crap. So I'm not going to do them for a while.

This sucks.

Unfill

I decided yesterday to see how lunch went before I made any unfill decisions. So when I couldn't get down more than four bites of some chili, my decision was pretty much made for me. 

Luckily, someone had cancelled their 3 pm appointment, so I was able to get it. I noticed as I left work and was driving there that I was starting to feel some uncomfortable tightness in my chest. Not quite the same feeling as being stuck - I'm guessing what I was feeling was my esophagus/stomach feeling swollen and inflamed from everything that has been going on. Yet another sign that an unfill was necessary. 

I ended up seeing Kim yesterday. She's the nurse I originally liked going to, but not the nurse who did my fill on Saturday. We discussed what was going on and she mentioned that she would probably take 0.5cc out. I said that I was thinking more along the lines of 0.3cc because I didn't want to just end up paying for more in a couple weeks, but I also conceded that I've never been in this position before so I don't know what kind of relief I would get for 0.3cc vs 0.5cc. 

Kim said that we would see "what her syringe told her" and make a decision as to how much to take from there. I gave her a really puzzled look and she explained that if you're really irritated, as soon as she gets the syringe in the port, the saline will start coming out on its own because of the pressure from the swelling and irritation. So she said that she could gauge how irritated I was by how much and how fast saline pushes up into the syringe. 

Huh. Who knew?

If you'll remember, last time Kim did my fill, she ended up sticking me three times and jabbing at the side of my port a lot. It was not the most comfortable fill experience. On Saturday, Kristina got my port in one single, quick stick, which was wonderful. Well, I don't know what's up with Kim, but she ended up doing the same thing this time! It is so painful! She does the initial stick, and then a zillion tiny sticks while she's in there, hitting the side of my port and trying to get in the right spot. I'm not sure if I want to keep going through that with her, even though our personalities mesh. 

Once she actually got the needle in the right spot, she said, "Yeah, you're really irritated in there. It's coming right out." I had over 1.5cc push its way out into the syringe on its own, which I guess is a bad sign. Kim struggled for a bit, trying to figure out how much to take out - she even said at one point that she wanted to take the whole 1.0cc out, which I had to practically beg her not to do. 

In the end, she took out 0.5cc and I'm on liquids/soft & mushies through today, plus an ibuprofen regimen to reduce the swelling. 

I think it's going to be a few days before I'm going to be able to get a true read on where I'm at because of all the swelling and irritation. Right now, I feel much better because the general tightness in my chest is gone, and I'm doing fine with liquids - they're going through like nothing. I'm just going to baby things for a few days and then start paying really close attention. 

I'm glad I got the unfill, but I'm sad to think about how the weight loss isn't going to be so stellar. But in the end, it's more important to keep the band & my body healthy than it is to have quick, awesome weight loss, so I feel like I did the right thing. 

Wednesday Weigh In and Thoughts on My Fill

Last Week: 245.2 lb
This Week: 239.6 lb
Loss: 5.6 lb

Yes, you read that right. Five point six pounds. And after struggling for weeks and weeks bouncing up and down the same few numbers on the scale, surprise! Here are the 230s! Which puts me this many pounds down from my HNPR weight:

On one hand, I'm super stoked to have lost that much, and super stoked to be in the 230s, which my brain just isn't quite registering yet. On the other hand, this fill is STILL rough. I made it through lunch yesterday without an issue, but can't say the same for dinner. Nothing stayed down. A little while later, I tried some cereal because {1} I was hungry, dammit, and {2} I just wanted to chew something. The cereal slid right through, as I had hoped it would, which was such a relief that I really had to work to limit myself.

If I'm honest with myself, I think I need a tiny unfill. Maybe 0.2 cc. At the same time, though, I'm enjoying the benefits of being where I am. I haven't been snacking nearly as much - partly because I'm just not hungry, and partly because I'm scared to death that whatever I choose to snack on will make me miserable in five minutes. I haven't been eating breads, pastas, rice, etc. because I'm afraid to. And knowing I'm teeter tottering along the red line has made me super cautious as I eat (which I should be anyway, but am not the best at remembering). So there ARE good habits that are being forced upon me by this restriction. And there are also not-so-great consequences, like the fear and possibility of PBing up every single meal. (Which mentally makes me feel bulimic, and that's definitely not the mindset I should get from the band.)

I just know that I need to make a decision soon, because I've been told that if I go in for an unfill within 7 days of a fill, it won't cost me anything (I haven't tested this out yet, and am skeptical, so I guess we'll see). So I have to go back before Saturday if I'm going to do it. And what I want to do is just say, "oh, well, let's see how lunch goes.", and then if lunch goes fine, "let's see how dinner goes", and I'll just keep doing that until Friday night when a free unfill isn't an option anymore. I just need to decide, but I don't want to. I don't want to give up good weight loss numbers and go back to jumping around the scale for weeks on end. But I also don't want to PB every other meal and be hungry, but miserable at the thought of eating anything.

I just want to make smart decisions. What's best for my band, my body, my bank account, etc. It's just not an easy decision to make. I don't want to go back and get some taken out, only to need it back in a couple weeks and have to pay another $75 to get what I already had.

And now I'm rambling and talking in circles. So I'll take that as a sign that I need to end this and just hit "publish" and let all my wonderful bloggy pals comment to help me figure all this out. GO!

Two Things...

ONE) I can't believe I forgot to send some blog love to my dear Cheri at Staying In The Pink. She's joining the banded sisterhood today, so please stop by and send her some love!

TWO) I was able to (mostly) eat lunch! I'm currently completely obsessed with Panera, and have been getting their Classic salad (no onions!) plus Chicken with the sweet, sweet nectar of the gods that is the Honey Tangerine Dressing. I ate super slowly, finished most of the chicken, and ate probably only about 1/2 cup of the greens total. And I had two teeeny tiny pinches of the inside of the baguette. But I was able to eat! I started feeling a tiny bit stuck after about 5 minutes of eating, but just waited for a few minutes and it passed. And, rather unfortunately, I've just discovered that my band has ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM letting Whoppers (as in the malted milk balls, not the Burger King sandwich, eww) slide right down. I'm cutting myself off. Right now. (Okay, I just popped one more in, but seriously. Right now.)

Fill No. 4 (A really long post.)

Holy moly, chickadees. This fill has been an experience.

A tiny bit of background: my surgeon used to be a private practice. Shortly after having my surgery, he joined a large, university-based group. So now, a lot of things are done "centrally" through the group, like making appointments, etc. Last week, he moved his office to a different building in the hospital/surgery center/medical building complex that they've been in. Previously, the office was in a section of the complex that was similar to a strip mall type set-up, where each doctor's office had it's own outside door and was it's own individual space. Now, they've moved into one of the medical buildings, so you have to walk into the big building and then find the "suite" for your individual doctor.

So on Saturday, I arranged for MFN to watch The Kid and I went to the new building to get my fill. My appointment was at 1:30 and I showed up at 1:20. I walk up to the building doors and...they're locked. I knock, nothing. I do that whole hands covering the sides of your face as you creepily peer into the building thing. Nobody. I notice that there's another set of doors directly across the atrium on the back side of the building - maybe those are unlocked? So I get back in my car, drive around the building to the back side, park, get out, go up to the doors, and...locked. WTF? My next thought is to call the office, so that's what I do. Only, remember how I mentioned that as a part of this new group everything is more centralized? Yep, I get an automated system saying that the group's normal business hours are Monday through Friday, blah blah blah, thank you, good bye.

Again I say, WTF?

Seriously, what do you do in that situation? I know the office is on the second floor, so it's not like I can go all peeping Tom in the windows to try and find somebody. I can't get in the doors, and I can't call. What the hell?

Very luckily, as I found out later, the receptionist had been taking two other women back to their appointments and heard me knocking on the door (Even though she couldn't see me because they were up on the second floor of the open atrium. She could hear me, but couldn't see me) so she came down to let me in. I only had to wait about five minutes. As opposed to the two other women who had just been taken back, who had been waiting and knocking outside for more than an hour, with everyone inside completely oblivious to the fact that the doors were locked. The receptionist and my nurse apparently just thought that those two ladies didn't show up for their fill appointments, and the consensus was that the doors must have automatically locked on a timer because other people were able to get in earlier in the day.

I finished all my paperwork and paid my $75, then sat down to wait for my appointment. At this point, it was already 1:45 - 15 minutes past my original appointment time, and had we been at the old location, I would have been in and out by now. But since the other two ladies waited outside for the entire duration of their appointment times, I now had to wait for both of them to have their fills before it could even be my turn. I finally went back at 2:20, almost an hour past my original appointment time.

My fill was with a different nurse - not the one I prefer to go to. But to be honest, that preference is really based off of "inside tips" from other people who heavily suggested I not let her do my fills. I, personally, didn't have any problem with her on Saturday, so maybe I won't be so selective in the future unless I start to see things that worry me.

I told her about what I've been eating and how my weight isn't going anywhere. She told me that according to their records, I had lost 8 pounds since my last visit in February. Not sure where they're getting those numbers from, because my records show that I had only lost 2.6 pounds in that time. I weighed in at 245.2 fully clothed on her scale.

We settled on 1.0 cc, which was the maximum I was willing to get. She said that since I'm getting up there (I'm now at 10.4 {probably really 10.5cc) in my 14cc band) I would probably start getting 0.5cc or 0.2cc fills after this one. And that's FINE BY ME. Oh, and if you're Lap Band Gal's friend on FB, you'll remember some recent conversation about a photo she posted of a recent fill where her surgeon didn't wear gloves to administer it. My nurse didn't wear gloves for my fill on Saturday, either. And I can't remember them wearing gloves any other time. Do yours wear them? Are you grossed out/worried that some don't? I'm not, but now wondering if I should be. LOL.

The fill itself was painless - nothing like last time. She found the port in one stick and was in and out in less than a second. Sah-weet!

However, afterward, this fill has been ridiculous. As I've come to discover, for me, my fills are SUPER tight for the first 2-3 days, then they tend to relax. Well, I think I'm getting close to my maximum comfort zone, because the first two days with this fill have been seriously RED ZONE for me. Saturday, I couldn't even keep down water. Sunday, for lunch, I made it through about 5 spoonfulls of chicken noodle soup and then had to stop. Finally, by Sunday night things were relaxing a little bit and I made it through some protein - a cookout at my Dad & Bonus Mom's house where I had about 1/3 of a hot dog, no bun, in TIIIIIIIIINY bites, a couple bites of hamburger patty with ketchup, no bun, and a few bites of baked beans. Other than eventually having to PB up a bunch of slime, the food never came back.

I felt HORRID yesterday. Dehydrated and exhausted from no calories or protein. Obviously, that's not the way you're supposed to feel with the band. That's obviously RED ZONE behavior. And I'm considering going in for a slight unfill if things don't loosen up today or tomorrow. Like I said, I can tell that things are relaxing a bit because I was able to eat some protein yesterday, and I had a protein shake this morning just fine. We'll see how lunch and dinner go today and then I will make a decision.

I kind of feel like you have to find your red zone in order to find the green zone, you know? Like you have to hit a point where you can say, "WHOA. Too much. That's my limit." so that you can then back it up a tiny bit into the green. I'm not saying you should do crazy fill amounts to try to get red, but that hitting the red, while uncomfortable and unpleasant, is actually pretty helpful in terms of gauging where you're at in the process. I think being red during my initial fill phase tells me that once things settle down, I'll be pretty close to green. Of course, if I'm not able to eat any real food at lunch or dinner today, I'll be going back in to take it down a notch. But for now, we'll see how it goes.

There is ONE thing to say about being in the red: it's conducive to weight loss. I weighed in at 239.8 this morning. Obviously not the optimal, sustainable, or healthy way to go about weight loss with the band, but I'm not gonna lie: seeing the 230s this morning was kind of awesome. I'm sure it will bounce back up a bit once I'm able to eat again, but fleetingly, I'll take it.

Wednesday Weigh In

Last Week: 244.0 lb
This Week: 245.2 lb
Gain: 1.2 lb

Two things:

1) I can NOT wait for my fill on Saturday.

2) I have GOT to figure out a way to stop snacking all. freaking. day. long.

Mish Mash

Randompants post ahead. You've been warned.

1) The scale is being nice to me right now. Let's hope it sticks around for Wed-nes-day Weigh-In time. I'm pretty sure it's mostly because I've been drinking TONS of ice cold water while at work. Like, TONS. Did you know that drinking very cold things helps you burn more calories? Your body has to work harder to regulate your internal temperature when you do, thus, calorie burn! I don't know exactly how many more calories it burns, but I can totally attest to the temperature regulation thing. I have been FREEZING at work since I've been drinking all this ice water. And like I said, the scale likes me right this very second, so I'm gonna go with it.

2) Easter weekend was weird, but in a good-ish way. For literally the first time EVER, we didn't spend the holiday rushing between families and worried about whose feeling were getting hurt by us not being there. We spent the weekend with just the three of us, doing whatever we wanted to do. It was so nice. We gave The Kid his basket Sunday morning, then enjoyed the breakfast bar at Frisch's Big Boy, then had an in-home egg hunt. Nice and relaxed, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

3) That's a lie. Most of the weekend was nice and relaxed. Except for the part where we decided that since the whole family was home and we had no plans, this would be the weekend we finally broke The Kid of his pacifier ("passer" or "nuk nuk" to him) habit. A long time ago, we restricted his passer use to what we call "night night and naps", so he knew that unless he was sleeping in his crib, he couldn't have them. And I've known for a while that we need to kick the habit completely at some point, but I haven't wanted to do it.

Well, since we put in our 60 day notice to our apartment complex and will be moving in with my in-laws soon, and I knew that every weekend after this would be me and The Kid alone while The Hubs is working on getting the in-laws house ready, and I wanted to have the habit kicked before we moved, this was the time. (Nice run-on sentence, Anna.) So I cut small holes in his nuk nuks and left them out for him to find. He realized they were "broken" and I asked him if he wanted to throw them away. (That kid LOVES throwing things away.) So all was well and good until it was actually time to take a nap or go to bed.

OH the pity. "Mama? A new nuk nuk? Pwwwweeeeeeeeeease?!" It's a good thing we had thrown them all in the trash or I would have totally given in several times this weekend. It has been a challenge, to say the least, but he has taken naps without his passer both days, and fell asleep (after a long bout of crying) both nights. It helps that we gave him Buzz Lightyear and Woody action figures instead. LOL

4) It's Opening Day!!!

Born and raised a Cincinnati girl, today is the second best day of the year. I didn't realize until recently, though, that other cities with major baseball teams don't go crazy for opening day like we do. We love our Redlegs. Did you know that we're the oldest baseball team in America? And did you know that because of that, we ALWAYS get to play at home on opening day? It's a BFD. (Big effing Deal, if you're not down with the language. LOL)

It is really depressing to me to not be a "true" Cincinnatian anymore. Even though it will always be my home town and I will always love that city, I (very unfortunately) keep moving farther and farther north to be with my husband. I'm from Cincinnati, he's from a town north of Dayton, so when we moved in together before we got married, we chose a town in the middle. Now that we're moving in with his parents, I'm going all the way up to his hometown. And for people there, Dayton is the closest "city", so they consider themselves Daytonians. I don't want to be a Daytonian. I am a Cincinnatian. Ugh.

Anyhoo, Go Reds!