Banded Girl

It finally happened.

After 441 days as a bandster, I had a horrible stuck episode in the car.

We went to lunch, and the meal just wasn’t working out well for me. The people I went with were done and I had no hope of getting anything down because my last bite was stuck in my throat, so we decided to go.

I knew that we should have stuck around the restaurant longer after a mile or so. I only had seven more miles, and elebenty billion stoplights, before we made it back to the office. But it was okay. I was going to be okay.

By the second or third stoplight, I was doing deep breathing exercises and sweating profusely, despite the full blast of the air conditioner. comeoncomeoncomeoncomeoncomeoncomeoncomeoncomeonCOMEON I yelled.

Did I mention that I was driving?

Yeah.

Long story short, I made it back to the office, parked, and spit up several mouths full of saliva and foam. Then I was able to make it to the restroom and let my body finish doing its thing.

My poor passengers.

Starting Weight: 298.2 pounds
Last Week’s Weight: 215.2 pounds
Today’s Weight: 213.0 pounds

I lost 2.2 pounds! Now, I’m eating a slice of ice cream pie in honor of the Boy’s birthday….

...I remember this tasting better...

Edit: Six weeks to shed 13.2 pounds…

I’m tired of analyzing and reanalyzing everything I eat.

Does this have enough protein? What are the ingredients? How many calories does this have? Will this prevent me from seeing a loss? Is this going to help me feel full for a while? Is this something the Boy will eat? Will this food and my band play well together? Is this more than a cup? Is there a better option? When did I eat last? What did I eat last?

I think about the future, about a lifetime of this almost continual debate going on in my brain, and it feels very bleak and depressing.

In the before time, when I felt destined to a life of obesity, I didn’t have to think about what I ate. I didn’t worry about Every. Single. Calorie. I was going to be fat anyway, did it really matter what I put in my body? I had complete freedom to ingest anything I wanted.

I didn’t step on the scale each Thursday, trying to anticipate which number would glow up at me. I didn’t feel a twinge of disappointment when the number was larger than the previous week’s or because my loss wasn’t what I wanted it to be.

When you’re a size 26/28, there’s not a lot of clothing variety. If I wanted to go into a brick and mortar store to look around (which rarely ever happened), I would go to Torrid or Lane Bryant. After Sunday’s Lane Bryant expedition, I realized with some panic that I wasn’t going to be able to shop there much longer since I now wear their smallest size. That means that I fit into “normal people” clothes now and that there are approximately half a billion stores in every mall where I can go to shop. I don’t know where to start and part of me feels embarrassed at the thought of stepping into them. There’s no way in hell those skinny people clothes will fit me! I don’t want to have to ask for a dressing room and then leave the store empty handed because I couldn’t get anything on.

What it ultimately boils down to is that I still feel like the fat girl. I know that I’m close to a “normal” size now, but I still feel like I did 83 pounds ago. I know that I’m much thinner, that I can fit in smaller clothes, that my knees don’t continually hurt any more, and that I have started to develop collar bones, but I look in the mirror and see the same Banded Girl that I saw last May. It feels like all of this effort is getting me nowhere; that I’m agonizing over every food decision and faithfully weighing myself each week for nothing.

I wonder if my brain will ever catch up.

I have some new clothes!!

I had to make a payment on my Lane Bryant credit card (hello 25% interest!!) over the weekend. When I went to the website, I noticed that they had a sale: 40% off of EVERYTHING (excluding Spanx).

Now, my bras have been too big for quite a while (you can tell in the Slimpressions video I posted in July) and I was looking forward to Labor Day sales this coming weekend so that I could maybe perhaps get a few that fit me a little better. This was my chance, and a week early!!

So I went to the nearest Lane Bryant on Sunday and asked for a tape measure.

I went from wearing a 46C before surgery to a 44B in January to a 40D now. I was swimming in the B cup, but now I need a D cup? Bra sizing is weird.

I got four of these bras. I also got two tunics (one black, one gray):

Long tunics!

and three lacy camis (one teal, one purple, one pink):

I got these to wear under the tunics.

and I ordered a pair of pants:

I haven't had khaki pants in years!

IN SIZE 14P because the 16A I tried on in the store was TOO BIG. And not just in the length sense!

SIZE 14!

All of the shirts I bought were size 14/16, which means that this may have been my last Lane Bryant purchase ever. Except for bras. I might still buy bras there.

HOLY SMOKES!

I haven’t really purchased any clothes since I was banded. I’ve bought a shirt or pair of jeans here and there, but I’ve mostly been wearing things that I had from my smaller days many years ago and really baggy shirts. Really, I’m still wearing tees that fit me pre-op.

It’s amazing how much more comfortable I am wearing a bra that fits. And, for the first time in a long time, I feel kind of cute. Kind of.

(Sorry I haven’t been blogging much lately. I was sick. I didn’t think I’d ever get better. Now I think I’m almost back to normal. Starting back on C25k tomorrow–is anyone still with me on this??)

Amy W. wrote a beautiful post today. Go check it out.

Starting Weight: 298.2 pounds
Last Week’s Weight: 218.4 pounds
Today’s Weight: 215.2 pounds

Negative 3.2 pounds. Cool. Seven weeks to lose 15.4 pounds…

I’ve felt pretty poorly all week. Haven’t started the first “according to plan” week of Couch to 5k yet. Hopefully this weekend. How are you all doing with it?

/BG communicating in sentence fragments

Starting Weight: 298.2 pounds
Last Week’s Weight: 218.0 pounds
Today’s Weight: 218.4 pounds

Up .4 pounds. We are not amused. And the thing is, I thought my food choices were pretty good this week. I would say that it’s probably a blip, but the scale hasn’t been under 218 all week. *sigh*

That’s right. Week .5. I’m modifying the plan to suit my needs. Instead of jogging for 60 seconds, walking for 90, I’m jogging for 30 seconds, walking for 2 mins. Next week might be Week 1 or it might be Week .75, wherein I jog for 45 seconds, walk for 105. We’ll see :)

I walked at 3.3 miles per hour and jogged at 4.5 miles per hour. The pace seemed comfortable and I even went up to 4.7 MPH on the last jogging interval. I took heart when I wanted to jog for longer than 30 seconds, which happened a few times. I limited it, though. I need to ease into it!

How’s everyone else doing?

I look a lot worse than I felt.

These are my initial impressions, a mere 30 minutes after I gave up on my first day of Couch to 5k:

• This is hard.
• There’s no way I can do a half marathon in six months.
• There’s no way I can do a half marathon in six years.
• I’m going to be sick.
• I need to use my inhaler.
• I’m so tired I couldn’t spell inhaler on my own. Thanks, Spellcheck!
• Seriously? Am I going to have asthma problems?

I know, it’s really pessimistic. But that first attempt was BAD, ya’ll. BAD. I’m fairly certain that I’m going to have to repeat week one. But, on the bright side, I managed to do four of eight running sessions before I thought I was going to keel over. That’s good, right? AND, I calibrated the distance tracker on my heart rate monitor before I started the C25k workout. So I was already a little fatigued. AND I was running at 4.4 miles per hour at one point AND I sustained the pace for a minute. Should probably slow that down, actually.

Really, I know it’s okay. I just don’t feel like it’s okay. Mainly because I kind of feel like I’m gong to be sick still.

Oh, and I forgot to actually tell my heart rate monitor I was starting, so I don’t have the data for this workout. I did see that my poor little heart was going at about 160 beats per minute at one point. Whatever that means :D