Week 1 (?)

It's Tuesday again. Which means that tonight is Biggest Loser night. GO TEAM PAT! This also means it is almost 1 week since I went in to the doctor. I have been spending this week doing the following things:

1. Trying to make healthier choices with my food

2. Homework

3. Praying

I would have said working, however, this week I didn't do much of that. Instead we went to the beach for Joleigh's birthday party and a big friends weekend. It was fabulous.. but quite a tough location for trying to make positive food choices. There were a lot of snacks.. a lot of delicious meals. Including some KILLER biscuits and gravy and AMAZING fettuccini alfredo. Dear me. Oh Man. Tough. I think throughout the weekend I did pretty good. I had a couple of fail moments, but it could have been a lot worse. I will call it successful since I definitely thought about my choices and made different choices than I likely would have prior.

So, #1 success.

Homework was such a struggle. I keep thinking to myself, Am I really ready for grad school? Ugh. It feels like so much of this stuff is over my head. Then on Monday night I went to class. I ended up getting lost in Portland on the way there, and lost in Portland on the way back. But in the middle.. I went to class. And I actually felt like I kind of understood what was going on.. at least, I think I understood it as well as my peers in the class. However, I still have not tackled my online class work yet. That is planned for today/tonight.

#2 partial success

This week has also had a lot of prayer. I am really trying to stay focused on God through all this and take his strength to make it through. What has become really apparent to me is that I need to be back as part of "the Body". I need to be part of a group where I am getting Christian help, prayer and perspective. Trying to do this all on my own just doesn't feel like it is working too well. I also spent some time this week and downloaded 2 albums from Christian bands so that I can try to increase the productivity of my drive time by using it to worship and focus on God. New bands I am listening to include Gundor and Needtobreath. Finding Christian music that sounds like the indy bands I love is tough.

#3.. success. :) Probably most most successful success of the week.

Next week.. more food choices.. adding in exercise.. staying caught up on homework (yikes) and continuing with the prayer (prayer and more prayer).

The big day (dun dun dun)

On Monday September 26th I got a call from the Bariatric Surgery Center in Salem letting me know that they had a cancellation and now had an appointment open for Wednesday September 28th. I took it. Tuesday night I watched Patrick dominate on BL and felt ready to go for Wednesday. Wednesday morning I got all dressed up and headed in to the doctor, feeling completely ready.

For the most part, I don't realize or remember during my average day, how big I actually am. This whole process of finding out about the weight loss surgery has been really tough in that it is a constant reminder of how big I really am. That I am killing myself with food. I am in the process of committing food-icide. The meeting with the doctor was rough. Weigh-ins, pictures and then.. dun dun dun.. the doctor. Everybody was so nice, but one question they kept bringing up to me was "are you sure you want to do Lap Band and not by-pass?". Well. Yea. I'm sure. Right?

Dr. Boulay ran some numbers for me. I weighed in at the office at 319 pounds. Qualifying myself perfectly for the surgery. With the LB I can anticipate losing 50% of my excess weight, or about 90-110 pounds. Maybe I can get under 200 in 2 years.. maybe. But even 50 pounds they would count as a success. With Gastric Bypass I can expect to lose 75% or so of my excess weight, or between 100-150 pounds. So.... which to do? In my head I have this fantasy of finally losing all the weight and being a size 14. I lie. In the fantasy I am way more of a size 8 than a 14. So the thought of going through all this and only getting down to a size 16 breaks my heart. I know it isn't all about sizes, but in my fantasy world (which takes place in a Banana Republic store) I am little. That's what I want. But I don't really want the full By-Pass. That prospect scares me.

I left the doctor's office feeling totally defeated and overwhelmed. But what made me the most nervous was the incredible urge that I had to just push all this "diet" non-sense to the side and go get a Big Mac from McDonalds. I felt like that was going to make me feel better. Who thinks like that? The cure to deciding how much weight to lose is a Big Mac? It makes no logical sense at all. It reminded me of all the times I think I have come close to losing weight, and then freaked out and stopped. I certainly have a food problem for sure.

So I went back to work, after the appointment. I debriefed with my good friend Holly and then had the lunch I had packed. Lentils, brown rice and fat-free split pea soup. It was certainly no Big Mac. But strangely, it was also quite satisfying....