& a very happy halloween to you all

no holiday candy for me, ok, well, i lied, i had ONE small jellied spider 'cause it looked black so i thought it was licorice, WOOT, turns out it was just grape, lame. i mean, it was ok, but definitely not worth it in the end. & there is a lesson in that, when craving pure black licorice, go to the source, don't mess around with what may or may not be actual licorice candy.

biggest challenge of the day for moi would have to be the ginormous sheet cake that sat next to the printer today, carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. i did resist it, but just barely, i walked by it several times gazing at the box so tempted for just one little tiny nibble, but i did resist. & no, i don't really feel any better about myself for resisting. i know that i should, but here's the thing, in a way i have such a long ways to go before i'm remotely satisfied with my body again that passing up one little damn piece of carrot cake is not going to make me step out in the aisles & dance to brass monkey. not today.


so another halloween is nearly gone & it was, over all, a rather big bust for me. no parties, no apple bobbing, no pole dancing contests, no egging or tp-ing of anything, just an hour of over time & then going home to watch some bad cable tv.

but at least i got to look vicious at work:

being an adult

i've come to realize that being an adult is so much more than working a full time job, getting married, buying a house, having kids, investing in a 401K, watching CNN & giving a damn, or not being carded when you buy booze. being an adult is, in a way, all of those things, but even more than that, part of it is simply knowing yourself well enough that you can learn from the mistakes of your past, listen to that voice inside your head, & ask for help when you really need it.

my mantra since i was about 13 has always been "i don't wanna grow up, 'cause baby if i did, i couldn't be a toys 'r us kid." & in many ways i don't want to grow up, i don't want to lose that playful, idealistic, completely random & whimsical person that i've been since birth. but at the same time i want to be a woman in control of my life, my destiny, & the trajectory that i take in the upcoming years.

the biggest thing is i don't want to look back from old age with regret. true enough, all of us will have some regret in our lives, but i don't want to be consumed by the ghosts of my what-ifs. i want to stand firm in the convictions of my decisions & say that yeah, i made some mistakes, but i stand by them for what they taught me about myself, others, & the greater world that i live in.

i know i'm being oblique right now, speaking in generalizations & the foggy shadows of the unsaid. but suffice to say, i'm standing at a much more than a cross roads now, i've come into a field with many possibilities & so many directions in which my life can branch off, & i need to consider the next few steps carefully. i don't want to be overly cautious & miss out on a great life adventure, but i also don't want to be reckless & find myself regretting my impatience & short sighted view.

so please say a prayer, or a chant, or just think happy thoughts for me over the next few weeks & months.

weekly weigh in #15

it's the fifteenth week that i've been weighing here on my blog & i have a loss, again, FINALLY! yippee! it's also the end of the first week of my competition with the farm people & jenn & i are neck in neck in our percentages. so, competition is close & i'm motivated to win.

money money money money, money!

it's also nice that my numbers are not overlapping on my bottom ticker. that really makes me happy.

original weight: 323 lbs
last weeks weight: 276 lbs
this week's weight: 271 lbs

& the results are officially in

so the results from my sleep study are FINALLY in! & basically the answer is that i have something even milder than mild sleep apnea. it's something that lots of people have, where you stop breathing, slightly, more like a wee tiny bit of obstructed breathing, a couple of times during the night. it's so mild that they don't even routinely treat it with a CPAP machine, on occasion they'll suggest a dental device, but normally not even that.

however, because of the fact that i am looking at gastric bypass, the nurse at the specialty center needs to get in touch with the people at hcmc because occasionally the surgeons will want even the mildest cases of sleep apnea treated for about two months before surgery in order to have one less possible cardiac complication at the time of surgery. & so the optimistic estimate of january '07 may have been a bit premature since i now have the results of the sleep study.

& further more they want me to do this other "test" in which i wear some kind of a watch that measures my activity levels, and at the same time i need to keep a sleep log, to help them better figure out exactly why i've been so blasted tired lately. & i'll have to wear the watch & keep the log for 2-4 weeks, & it's going to be about 4 weeks before i actually get the stinkin watching thingie due to the fact that they are mondo expensive & the sleep clinic only has a couple of them.

actually, i think i need to call them back & see if i can leave a message for the nurse that i talked with today because i was in such a hurry to get out of there so i could get to work on time that i didn't clarify if she was going to call hcmc soon to find out about the CPAP, or if i was going to have to do the watch thing & THEN the CPAP, if needed, which would be absolutely ridiculous since that would be a few months wasted.

action plan? well, my bad self is going to take a lesson from my blog of a few days ago about persistence & call both HCMC & the specialty center today to get all of my follow up questions answered. i do also need to find out when i need to meet with the internal medicine doctor at HCMC & when i would be meeting with a surgeon & all of that jazz. & find out who needs to do my notification to medica, i want to make sure that all of my t's are crossed & i's dotted with smiley faces.

interestingly enough i was all philosophical & patient about this whole surgery thing, but now that it looks like it may be seriously delayed by something that is being reported to me as a very-mild-not-even-of-concern-because-it's-so-mild-sleep-not-even-actually-apnea. so, let's keep our fingers crossed that the surgeons at HCMC don't really want me to have a CPAP. or, if they do insist on me being on CPAP for two months, that i'll get that sooner rather than later & that i won't have to wait for the other acitography test & the stinkin watch that takes a month for me to be able to get.

the only bright spot in any of this is that the doctor's office scale reported me as weighing less than when i weighed in at the Y last week. but, it's not an official weight since it was done two days early at a non-official scale. yeah, it has to be all neat & tidy for purposes of the great pork off, aka farm people competition.

& yet another blog from the princess

yeah, so one blog is not enough for yours truly. i've created another blog with some of my partners in crime. i won't put the whole 411 up here since the first blog entry says it all. so here's the link & it's also on my list of links to the right. cheers.

http://farmpeople.blogspot.com/

weekly wacky weigh in #14

since it's no longer on wednesday i had to change the title a wee bit, but the concept is still the same. my porky self steps on a scale, records the numbers, & shares it with the whole wide world.

original weight: 323 lbs
last week's weight: 273.5 lbs
this week's weight: 276 lbs

ugh, up i go again. but here's the thing gang, i'm starting on a new adventure with miss jenn, a bet of sorts, & i hate to lose, so let's see where that takes me.

the value of persistence

normally i'm a pretty laid back, believing it'll all work out in the end kinda gal. but i've had this odd niggling lately concerning my student loans for this semester at hamline. i've been religiously checking my account on piperline, daily or multi-daily. i even called last week & was reassured that these things take time & not to worry, i dropped off my forms so all will be okie-dokie. have a cookie.

but the annoying niggling wouldn't go away. so i called them this morning on my first break at work. still no word, but at least i got transferred to someone's voicemail. i left my message with all my info, my phone number, & went back to work. & still, niggle niggle niggle, at the back of my brain.

when my lunch break rolled around at 3:45pm (YES, my lunch break is at quarter to four in the afternoon, but that's another whole blog) i decided instead of my usual walk in the gym that i would give them another call. just in case they learned anything. & it's a good thing i did. this time i got transferred again, but the lovely lisa answered instead of me getting her voicemail, she took a look at things, asked a couple questions, & said she wasn't sure why my money wasn't there. a bit more digging & whoops, i don't have a guarantee statement on my file. which i know i filled out 'cause you only have to do it once & then as long as you don't change lenders you're g2g*. & since i've been going to hamline since last century & borrowing from my same bank the whole time, i knew it was there. lisa took my number down, made a call, then called me back in about 4 1/2 minutes to let me know my form wasn't matching with my file, but it's all fixed, my money should be there tomorrow. all should now, really, be okie-dokie. have a cookie.

& there's why it's good to be a bit of a bulldog. sometimes it ticks people off, but if i wouldn't have kept calling it would be the end of october, i'd be getting another bill from hamline for my class this month & i wouldn't get my loan money until november, if i was lucky. i also feel like i really got something accomplished today, there was a problem, i got it identified & solved. 'cause i'm a woman, w-o-m-a-n. oh yeah.

*g2g= good to go

on the fa(s)t train

so right now looks like i'm on the fa(s)t train to surgery. i had my meeting monday morning with the nutritionist, christine. i brought my information on my multivitamin, we went over my questionnaire that i handed in at the information session, & went through some other standard questions that she had to ask of me at our first meeting. & i was brutally honest with all of it.

she was really happy with what i have been doing & said that i was an ideal canidate for surgery. she also said that she hadn't met anyone for quite some time that she thought was as ready & as perfect a canidate as yours truly. she also said that because of my insurance i would need to meet with her for a minimum of three times & she apologized for that. when i told her i didn't mind & that it would give me time to get mentally ready for the surgery that seemed to impress her even more. i even told her, it took me years to get this big, i know that it will take time to change that.

so i'm having to meet with her a total of three times, with a month, or more, in between each session. she said that i may be having surgery as early as january. & that my next steps are to get my personality evaluated & my head shrunk. which, of course, she didn't say it in quite those terms. but i do need to take the mmpi (minnesota multiphasal personality invintory) & then see a psychologist after that. i also may need to see their on-site internal medicine doctor, i think that i need to do that anyway for my insurance. so january would be nice, but if it's later that's fine too.

christine basically told me to just keep doing what i have been doing. i have all of the big changes already done that they want people to do before they get gastric bypass surgery: no snacks- just 3 meals/day, no calorie beverages (more than 10 calories/8oz=calorie beverage), & exercising regularly. she did say she understands with my back being all broken & messed up that i haven't been working out as rigorously, but i have been trying to do more walking in smaller chunks to make up for it.

for my next meeting with her i'll have my daily sheets that i've started keeping. i track my exercise, water, vitamins, meals, daily steps & comments on the day. i'm also keeping track of my weights, starting this friday. & it's all in a nice little white three ring binder which is so handy for travel.

in addition to josh & marty, i learned that my sister's roomie & good friend crystal recently had the GB just at the beginning of october. i wish her well with the results & a quick recovery. i mentioned to rach & tina that i was thinking about doing this & they're supportive of what ever i decide to do. as are the fabulous miss jenn (already of blog-fame) & the blonde miss jen (who also works with me & miss jenn). so far all of my peers are very positive in whatever i choose to do. unfortunately, my parents are going to be tougher to get on board.

i broached the subject last night with my mom & she was adamant that i not even think about getting the GB. she said that i shouldn't do anything as drastic as permanently alter my body just to lose weight. & i understand that i'm her baby still & that she worries about me & doesn't want anything bad to happen to me. but i'm also going to be going to hcmc, which is one of the best places in this region. my insurance also has "centers for excellence" which are the hospitals/centers that they have certified to be the best & this is on their list. i feel very comfortable & confident with the medical staff that i've met there thus far. my mom even suggested that i try either a hypnotist or an accupuncturist to help me lose weight. yeah. my mom who thinks that wiccans will go to hell 'cause they're devil worshippers is suggesting alternative medicine to me as a way to lose weight. she even suggested a chiropractor, which she loathes the entire profession due to personal issues.

uh, yeah, it's not going to be pretty. & i haven't come to this decision lightly either folks. i have tried. for years. & years. i have tried everything from south beach to weight watchers to manic exercising. i have met with dieticians & doctors. i've auditioned for the biggest loser. i am light years from where i was at 19 when i drank 4-6 cans of regular or cherry coke a day. i barely drink soda & if i do it's diet. i used to hate working out with a seething white hot passion. & now i love it & i'm super upset that i'm being benched again due to my back. i hated water & refused to drink it until i was around 23 or so, now if i don't get my 64+ oz a day i feel like somethings missing. those are three huge things right there. & i still seem to be stuck. i know that i can't do this on my own. i know that i need some kind of help in order to get to my goal.

& while it would be lovely to be a svelte size 2 & incredibly gorgeous, i have no such lofty ideals in my head. i want to be healthy. i want to be able to RUN again. i haven't really ran since i was in first grade. i want to go sky diving. horse back riding. snow boarding. mountain biking. bungee jumping. i want to be able to do it all without being winded. i want to go to a doctor's office & not have to sit on the bench or stand because the chair arms will cut into my thighs. i don't want to have to analyze the tables at a restaurant so i can pick the "big" side so that it's not cutting into my stomach. i want to have energy to do all of the crazy travel that i possibly can. i want to ride a roller coaster again. to go shopping & not have to be limited to lame giant or the other fat chick stores. i mean, yea for fat girl stores 'cause they weren't around when i was in high school, i had to order my clothes through the mail & hope that they fit. but i want to be able to go shopping at any store that i please. i want to spend a day walking the streets of paris & not worry that my feet & knees will ached & i'll be miserable for a week because there's too much weight on them. instead of sitting on the sidelines & watching my life i want to be out there actually living it.

weekly wednesday weigh in #14

i'm moving my regularly scheduled weigh-ins from wednesday to friday so that i'm more motivated to be good all week long & it's close enough to the weekend that i'll be able to keep that number in my head through saturday & sunday. so look for the newest update this coming friday.

claustrophobia, party of one

yeah, so i had my mri this morning. & normally i'm not claustrophobic. i don't fear small places. i don't get all jittery if i don't have tons of space. but man alive, this morning i was ready to have a first rate panic attack. i wound up being able to get through the imaging by closing my eyes & concentrating really hard to the morning show on ks95, which, the bastards, happened to be mostly commercials during the time that i had the headphones on. phooey on them!

so mri's were totally not made for the robust person. i mean, i know i'm not any skinny mini, but i'm also not shamu in human form either. & the little tiny tube was so small that my arms were brushing on either side & the top was just a few inches from my nose. definitely not a comfortable feeling. i felt hemmed in & trapped. like a cat under a laundry basket. i could see the outside word, smell the fresh air freedom, but it was just out of my furry grasp.

*note to self* no longer funny to let the cat get trapped under the laundry basket.

on the upside, they originally told me that i would have to lie perfectly still for a whole hour, & the imaging only wound up lasting about 30-40 minutes & then i was free. free-ee fallin' (name the tune & artist on that one) now i'm hoping that i don't have to stay guessing for weeks on end while the interpretation is done on the actual images. i'm so ready to just get a definitive diagnosis & start treatment for whatever it is that i have.

the pain meds are only helping very minimally. frankly, it scares the beejesus out of me that i can take two vicodin at night, wake up an hour & a half later in sheer agony, & then fitfully sleep for a few more hours before finally getting up for the day. that is not normal. that is so far out of the realm of normal for me. normally those things knock me out so completely that just one of them will have me feeling fuzzy for up to a full day or more. i don't want to be that girl, the one who's dependent on meds just to function.

& on the other end of the spectrum, i took a nice brisk walk this am with miss jenn when i got done with my mri. sitting around & moping & being miserable isn't helping me much, so i thought that perhaps some exercise might do a body good. my right butt muscle was totally killing me from my 20 minutes on the treadmill yesterday during my lunch break, but i pushed through that pain, & the back pain, & actually did the whole 26 minutes. we think it was a mile around the "nature trails" at her apt.

so until i get the medical okie-dokie to go back to my more intense workouts, it'll just be some walking for this chica. so walking with jenn, with jack, with my puppy walker, on a treadmill, in the halls at work. . . .i could almost write a dr. seus-ish book about walking & the places i'll go. & being relegated to just walking bums me out incredibly since i just got three new work out dvds last week. blech. no pilates for me for a while. but possibly the yoga. as long as i'm not on my back for too long. yeah, um, we'll let that one go for now.


ps "nature trails" = torturous hills & windy paths covered in mud, twigs, & other debris.

broken china doll

right now that's basically how i'm feeling, like i'm broken. cracked. flawed.

i haven't whined & moaned about it much lately on here, but i've been having a bunch of back problems lately, which have kept me from exercising. & kept me from doing much of anything except whimpering pathetically.

back in september i did go to a doctor, for my back & the horrid stabby headaches that i'd been getting. & he basically barely looked at me, didn't really believe me, & told me that it was probably just that i had bad posture &/or work station habits, to get evaluated for that & i'd be good as new. yeah. right.

at the beginning of october i had my yearly physical & mentioned this pain, which has been getting increasingly worse, to my brand new doctor. & of course i mentioned the stabby headaches & the other problems i've been having, & thankfully she was concerned & didn't dismiss me. which led to me having an x-ray on my lower back on friday october 6th, which led to me getting a prescription for heavy duty pain killers & an mri tomorrow & a preliminary diagnosis of: slight scoliosis, arthritis, & compressed discs aka the unholy trinity of back pain.

& i've shrunk an inch & a half.

yeah, how much does that totally suck? i used to be 5'6" just back a couple years ago. i'm now down to 5' 4 1/2". which is really really uncool. not only do i have crippling back pain, but i'm shrinking too. i now officially qualify to shop in the shortie section, all of my "regular" jeans & pants are getting too long on me. pants that i've had for a year now don't fit my height anymore & i'm walking on my hems. blech. double blech. i mean, yeah, on wow* i totally have a gnomish personality, but that doesn't mean i envy gnomes their height.

so i found all of this out last week on wednesday. & they wanted to get me in for an mri asap, but the only time they had last week, on friday, conflicted with my work schedule. so i'm going in at the crack's crack of dawn, i have to be at the imaging center at 6:15 am in order to be in the mri by 6:30am. & then after that i should have more information. i don't even know what to think about all of this. i'm seriously upset about the fact that i'm having so many problems, so much pain that just won't go away. & then the fact that back in september i was given the royal brush off by a doctor who barely gave me the time of day.

wish me luck gang that i get some kind of silver lining in all of this cloud cover. right now i'm getting used to the constant pain, & i really don't want my stasis to be a state of pain.

*wow=world of warcraft

weekly wednesday weigh-in #13

so, here's a nice pic of me to liven things up : )

& here's the stats you've all been waiting for. . . . .

original weight: 323 lbs
last week's weight: 273
this week's weight: 273.5

moving on up, from the eastside

ok, so not exactly the theme song to the jefferson's, but i already live on the east side & i'm trying to fly far far away.

so yet another little spat with my mom this past sunday, which then turned into me fighting with jack because i was: a) upset about my mom's insistence with little barbs about me not getting married in a church b) hurt that she seems to want to ruin my wedding, which then led to me: a)getting hurt because jack wasn't more perturbed on my behalf b) picking a fight with jack & bringing up every little tiny thing he has ever done which irks me & then resulted in me curling up in a ball & sobbing miserably on my bed.

i hate this vicious cycle.

& so i've decided to stop it. dead in its tracks. & while i love my parents, i really can no longer live with them if i want to be able to talk with them, ever, in the next five years. believe it or not i get along very well with my dad. i rarely to never argue with him about anything. but i'm routinely upset with my mom & often fight with my brother. & i am so sick & tired of the whole thing i could just simply vomit.

of course, there's also the fact that my mom seems to take a bizarre pleasure in undermining my attempts to lose weight. seriously gang, why must a diabetic keep that much candy, cookies, & sugar in the house? do we really HAVE to always have at least one gallon of ice cream in our freezer? i would like to think that it isn't a necessity & we really shouldn't have that crud around, but i seem to be the only one willing to quit it all cold turkey.

while in the midst of fighting with jack & crying i did text miss jenn & tell her that i planned on running away from home. which, really did seem like a viable option at that point. i was ready to pack as much as i could into my saturn & run. & somehow i decided i had to move out of my parents house. as soon as humanly possible. i even decided that if i couldn't find a place that i could afford that would let me have my beloved puppy, that i would have to give him back to the shelter. that was the hardest part is realizing that i may have to give him up. & then i asked jenn if she would help me find a place.

not long after that she texted me some info on a place in plymouth, decently close to my work, that said they love large dogs. i went out there yesterday and took a look around the place. they had a nice indoor pool, but the rent was just a bit more than i was willing to pay, none of the utilities were included, & the space seemed pretty small. so the hunt goes on.

i have an appointment tomorrow morning for another place in plymouth, then an appointment friday night for a place in brooklyn park, so we'll see how things go. i'm hoping to have a new place by november 1st, but by christmas day at the absolute latest. me & puppy need a new living situation. one where i have my own space, where i'm in charge, some place of MINE.

& of course there's the added benefit that i won't be seeing my mom nearly as much which means i won't be fighting with her nearly as much. i'll probably stop by there once every two weeks or so, visit them on the weekend that i work at the group home.

i know i know i know. i'm sure lots of you out there are saying that "seriously, you're twenty freakin nine years old, bout time ya left the nest." which i do whole heartedly agree with. & i did have an apartment for a while with my sis. however, i wasn't working enough hours to keep it on my own & i didn't really want a random roommate, so i had to give it up & move back in with my parents. but i just recently figured out what i was paying them per month to live there, which is way too much money to live in their basement & share a single bathroom.

wish me luck, please, that i find a place that i can afford & still keep my puppy. i really don't want to give walkie back to the nice people at st. francis. they're great people, a no kill shelter, but i don't want to give my puppy up, we kind of need each other.

just call me a peach, er, rather, how about a plum?

i'm so wicked tired. blech. i stayed up until 2am dying my hair plum pucker. now it's not as scary as it sounds, it actually looks more like a deep brown with purplish undertones. it's this funky new stuff from clairol called, herbal essences color lift mousse. basically it's a small can of mousse with the hair dye all mixed in, you put the entire can on your head, leave it there for a goodly bit, and then rinse it out & voila, a color for you to try for 8-10 shampoos to see how you like it. & of course they tell you how to get that color for longer if you really super duper like it.

tonight i'll have to have josh or jenn or jack take a pic of me in all of my royal purpleness, cause believe it or not folks, it actually looks quite good on me. i've insisted for a while that i would look so much better with reddish hair instead of the boring brown that was given to me at birth. so since i was about 16 i've been dying my hair on occasion to get a different version of me with my new do.

so early early this morning while i was going this i wet my hair, then towel dried it, & started releasing the mousse from it's impossibly tiny little can, mixing it into my damp strands bit by bit. & i looked at myself in the mirror, looked at this little can that couldn't've been much more than 3 inches tall, & said "yeah right, hopefully i won't wind up looking like a deranged purple zebra in the morning." but i kept on. squirting & spreading, squirting & spreading. & then all of a sudden my hair was literally saturated with the purple mousse & it just kept coming out of the can. i swear, it was like an everlasting gobstopper, it just wouldn't stop. at one point i thought about stopping with the can, when my hair was so gunked up with mousse that i had all of it standing straight up in the air, artfully covered with purple foam, but i'm also cheap enough that i couldn't just throw any of it away, so i moussed until i could mousse no more.

my hair isn't as purpley as you would imagine, or even as much as i might've liked, but it is an attractive color on me. deepening my natural color, making it darker & giving it more depth & richness. you can kinda sorta tell that there's a hint of purple, or at least reddish, to my tresses.

while i did like the concept of the mousse, no mixing or the sort, it was almost as expensive as my regular hair color & it only stays about on third of the time, which is rather sucky if you ask me. & my normal color has more dimension to it, so i think i'll start canvassing the stores now to locate my natural instincts egyptian plum. & at the targets that don't carry it i'll request that they start carrying it. never hurts to ask, right? worst thing they can do it say no, which really isn't all that bad if you think about it.

just call me titanic

as in: full steam ahead. NOT as in the largest vessel on the water. ok, so maybe don't call me titanic, i might cry or something.

but i went to the informational meeting last night at HCMC with josh for bariatric surgery. & i learned a lot. one thing i learned is that even if i do have gastric bypass i can still have my little demon spawn, i would just need to wait two or more years to have them. which, to be honest, would be how long i would be waiting anyway just due to some goals that i have for myself, my life, & where i want to be. so that was the best news that i received.

another thing i learned is that if i go through with this, that i would be going for the full on gastric bypass, not the lap band. my reasoning? they mentioned that occasionally the band will "wear away/eat away" at the stomach wall. & i had fearful images of something gnawing at my insides with tiny malicious plastic teeth.

now i'll admit, i've not been a fan of gastric bypass for a lot of people. i do feel like there are people who think that gastric bypass is an easy way out. what i would also like to note is that it really is not at all an easy way out. there is a lot of mental work that needs to go into it. hoop jumping & the like. also, from what i gathered from the class, you have to completely retrain yourself in the way that you eat.

one of the big rules is NO calorie beverages, which includes milk. it's a very interesting reason actually. i learned a whole lot about biology & why the stomach works the way that it does. so the "sensor" if you will that let's a person know when they're full is near the top of the stomach where the esophagus feeds in, & there's a sort of hatch door at the bottom of the stomach to hold all of that in while the stomach does the voodoo that it does do so well. which is why, some people can actually trick their bodies into feeling full from drinking water, they flip that sensor. now, post gastric bypass that little sensor does you no good because the stomach is basically a little pocket the size of your thumb with a bit of intestines attached & going right down, no flap, no trap door, so milk or other calorie liquids can pass go & collect their $200 without making you feel the least bit satisfied.

they also say that you need to wait 45 minutes after eating in order to drink anything, otherwise the fluid will wash whatever food is in the little pouch right on down to the intestines, which, from what i've heard, can be a semi painful sensation. yeah, i know, not the most appetizing of pictures at this point in time.

so i've got an appointment set up with a nutritionist. for my insurance to pay for any of this i will have to jump through several hoops successfully, one of which being a three month intensive program incorporating a nutritionist, psychologist, & a physician supervised exercise program. i know i'm mentally sound for this, & i've been doing pretty well on both nutrition & exercise, if you don't count my slip ups as of late. but i have been trying. so, only room for improvement, right?

& the most important thing to keep in mind in ALL of this, is that even right up until the actual time of the surgery i can always say, thanks, but no thanks folks, & back right out of it. so i definitely have some time to do some soul searching, see if i can do this on my own & really do it for the rest of my life, or if i need some serious help in order to get to where i want to be.

weekly wednesday weigh in #12

original weight: 323 lbs
last week's weight: 273.5 lbs
this week's weight: 273 lbs

wa-hoo, down half a pound : ) that's promising, another pound or so & all the numbers may be visable on my second ticker.

48 hours & not the tv show

so about 48 hours & josh & i will be headed into minneapolis to go to hcmc for my informational meeting on bariatric surgery. i still haven't made my decision yet, but i'm so utterly sick of being sick & tired. i want to feel healthy again & have energy to go out & do stuff again.

i've decided that my game plan will be to go ahead as if i'm going to do this. go to the meeting, get set up with the nutritionist & all that jazz. & then work my hardest to work my BIG butt off. i will follow nutritional guidelines. give up booze. chocolate. all of that crap. workout three to five to seven times a week. do everything within my power to change things.

with that said, in a way, i've come to terms with the fact that no matter what i do on my own, it really may not be enough. i've been trying on my own since i was eleven. every year i vowed to change things. to work out & lose THE WEIGHT. & every time, year after year, i fail miserably. december is a very depressing time at my house. me, surrounded by cakes & cookies that my mother insists on baking, thinking back on the past year & all the things that i could have done to change me health & didn't do. & inevitably my hand reaches into the cookie bucket & i kinda go numb.

did i mention last year my mother made nine gallons full of cookies?! i am not exaggerating. nine kemps ice cream pails full to the top with peanut butter kisses, peanut butter bars, four cup cookies, ginger snaps, snicker doodles, sugar cookies. and all of it completely covering out kitchen table, some buckets stacked on top of each other. & then there was the two pounds of baklava ordered from swiss colony, and the petite fours, & the christmas candy filling every dish in our living room. have i mentioned that my mother is a diabetic? no, i guess i didn't.

wtf mate, right? no wonder i haven't a snow balls chance in hades of doing this on my own. with family like that, who needs enemies??

i do love my family, but i feel like they're out to sabotage me on this whole thing. sometimes i don't even feel like jack is 100% on my side. when i'm trying to be really good he'll say how he wants to get some take out, & wouldn't burger king be really good right now? or i'll want him to go for a walk with me & the puppy when i get home from work & he doesn't want to just then but maybe later on (which never happens).

yes, i know, being totally an externalist at this moment & blaming everyone but myself for my being a fattie. but trust me gang, i've got enough guilt & shame on that one to satisfy an entire weight watchers meeting.

i just want some help. i need some help in order to do this. i don't want my kids to be fat. it's not a good way to spend a childhood. & i don't want my kids to know ME fat. i don't want them to be ashamed 'cause their mommy is bigger than all the other mommies. because kids point & laugh & call me names when i'm not there. this isn't a battle that anyone else should have to fight for me.

state of mind: pensive
music: just my own resilient click-clack-keystrokes