Back! C25k & Other Random Stuff!

I'm back from a great week. So proud of my co-workers for putting on such a great conference.

The coolest thing happened this week. I noticed one of our local clients, who we just adore, had lost a bunch of weight. When I got a chance to talk to him he said that he and his wife both had lap band surgery (she was there with him) we chatted up for a good 30 minutes about it and throughout the rest of the week as well. It was so awesome to see them and have that bond with them.

The good news is, there is 5k on my birthday this year that MS and I, along with a big group of friends have signed up for. It's one of those color runs where every throws colored powder as you're running and you get super dirty. It should be a blast and it will keep me on track with training for the next few weeks.

Had a little wink/ tear jerker today. I completed the first day of couch to 5k and I didn't cut a single corner or stop once! I pushed as hard as I could and right at the end as i was cooling down a song came on that happens to be the one song that brings me back to my first 72 lb loss. Whenever I hear it I smile and think about losing consistently, working out as hard as I could 7-9 times a week and feeling on top of the world. As soon as it came on I got choked up on the treadmill because I know I can do it again.

I hate that I struggle with food and weight gain, but it's my issue/cross to bear and I'm going to work hard on getting control of it. I had the hardest year of my life last year and shoveled food in my mouth to cope. So now it's time to dust off and get back at it! I think talking to our client and his wife this weekend inspired me. I have the most awesome weight loss tool in my body and its time to start utilizing it again.

Thank you so much for still reading and for commenting. It feels so good to have a little group to air it all out to and to also be inspired by.

Day 3 Away From Home

I have been in myrtle beach since Thursday for work. Good news is I have been working out and walking everywhere.. Bad news is my food choices have been terrible.

I brought my little blender and protein powder so today I'm going to start off right with a protein shake. I'm heading to work out now then there will be a final push to get everything done before 10 when attendees start showing up!!!

Please send me all the will power vibes you can spare!! Hope everyone has a fab day!!

Need Some Rest

I've been having the strangest problem lately....

For as long as I can remember, I have always creeped myself out when I'm home alone. Noises spook me, feel like someone is looking in the window etc. But for the most part it was Always while I was by myself. If someone else was with me in the house I would be fine.

When we bought our house, I really wanted an alarm on the house so I could sleep better. Our bedroom is over the garage and the whole living area is behind the garage ... So i imagine it would really be hard to hear someone break into our house if they did.

We got the alarm system and have had it for 2 or 3 years now. We've never had a problem with it to the point that I was starting to wonder if it worked. Every once in a while I would hear a noise or something that would bother me up enough to wake MS up to check it out.

About a month ago a police officer stopped by our house and said the house on the corner of the cul de sac had been robbed and asked if we had seen anything. Apparently someone had broken into a window and then left out of the back door. Which is what I have always feared happening to our house. We have a glass break sensor but who knows if it works?

After that, I called the alarm company to a)let them know there had been a break in b)ask them to dispatch the police immediately if our alarm goes off and c) asked them to come out and test
Our equipment. They said they would note our account that for the next 2 weeks they would dispatch the police immediately before even attempting to call us.

A night later I was driving out of the cul de sac and noticed two people sitting in a car I've never seen before just waiting. I turned my car around... Got the license plate and called the cops. A few minutes later, another car came up, people jumped up they did a quick exchange and sped off all while I was still making it quite obvious that I was getting license plate numbers.

I immediately felt like I messed up for being so obvious about getting their license plates and feared retaliation. A cop came by later and talked to me about it. He said it was probably good that they saw me because that will probably keep them from coming back. He also said to keep calling if I see anything wrong.

Exactly two days after that, I was woken up at 4:00 am to the phone ringing. I immediately heard The alarm going off down stairs. I woke up MS and answered and sure as shit it was the alarm company calling and the guy said our front door alarm was tripped and he had already dispatched the police. We stayed in our bedroom until the police showed up and MS went down stairs. I realized I was only wearing a t-shirt and by the time I grabbed my robe a cop was upstairs in my face. And the cop I spoke to two nights earlier was on the staircase behind him.
Turns out all of the doors were closed and locked and the windows were fine, no one had broken in. The cops were there for less than 5 minutes. For the first time in the multiple years we've had this system, it was a false alarm and it just so happened to trip about 1 week after someone broke into our neighbors' house.

We got a nasty gram from the county about having a false alarm and that if we had any more we would get fined for taking police officers off the street.

So that brings me to the title of this blog post. I'm not sure I've had a decent nights sleep since that all went down. I stay awake pretty late while my husband snores next to me and also has a fan on. Every night I hear noises that sound like someone is in the house and it scares the shit out of me!! I'm not sure how to get past this one. It's not like something bad actually happened that I'm traumatized from... I just get myself so creeped out I can't shut my eyes. Then when I do start to fall asleep I startle myself awake with some noise that may or may not even be real. What in the world?!?! Has anyone else ever dealt with something like this? Am I going off the deep end or what?!?

Be Kind

Sad about what happened in Boston today. There are some terrible people out there. I wonder what goes through the minds Of people who do this shit. There must be nothing there but hatred. Sad.

Also sad about how nasty people can be to each other. Passive aggressive or just aggressive in general. (I'm a Yankee though, and I'll take aggressive over passive aggressive any) i just don't get what good comes from it.

Either way, I'm enjoying being sore from swimming. Getting ready to head down to myrtle beach for a week for work. Ick. All I can think of is 15 hour work days in the sticky heat.. But it's always fun to hang with a lot of clients for a few days. I will still get some work outs in. I did last year and it felt good because we just eat on the fly while running the conference so it balances everything out.

I hope everyone has a fab week! Here's some work out motivation if someone has ever said or did something hurtful while you're going through a tough time.

Super Saturday!

Tried swimming laps today for a workout today and its awesome!! So many calories burned and my whole body is sore!

Also.. Today is a super exciting day for Lisa from The Saucy Bandster because its her wedding day! Congrats my sweet banded blogging friend!! So happy for her!!!

I hope everyone has a fab weekend!!

Candy Crush

Has anyone ever gotten sucked into the rotten evil that is Candy Crush?? it's a "free" game and I'll tell you what ... it will make you hate chocolate. And if you play long enough you won't have any money left to buy groceries.

Good Day

Today was such a good day, it's been a long time since I have had this kind of motivation. I followed a good liquid diet today. My esophagus is still a bit swollen I can tell by the amount of restriction I have and by the fact that I was only hungry once today. I have a slightly soar throat that goes down into my chest a bit, but that's pretty much it.

I drank 5 glorious bottles of water (same bottle refilled for my environmentalist friends) 1 sobe life water and a cup of coffee and a protein shake today. Sweet mother effing relief!!
What a difference being hydrated makes.

I went to the Y tonight and I worked out harder than I have in months. Since June I've just been going through the motions... Today I worked out hard like I did when I was losing 4 or 5 lbs a week. I feel good. I prayed for motivation and received it now its up to me to sustain it.

I want to set a goal of losing 7 lbs a month for the rest of the year. It not excessive and it's totally doable. I'm going to share it with my doctor for some accountability. My husband will probably be on board but it will take him half the time to lose twice as much weight ;)

Hope everyone has had a fab week I sure have missed reading everyone's blogs! I get so much inspiration from all of these lovely ladies!!!

Great News

Turns out I couldn't wait until Thursday. My esophagus kept getting worse and I ended up not being able to drink water or anything at all. So the PA that normally does my fills squeezed me in at lunch time and she took all of tHe fluid from my band ... I can't even explain the relief!! I was dying of thirst and that first big swig of water was so good! The pressure and pain in my chest was relieved and it didn't hurt to breathe! Thank goodness.

I went right over to the hospital for a barium swallow to see if the band had slipped or if I had a dialated esophagus... And much to my surprise... Neither!!! My band was just too tight and my esophagus was (and still is) very irritated. But no serious damage!!! thank The Lord!!!

My band will be empty for 4 weeks and I need to be on liquids for at least 2 more days while also taking Prilosec to help soothe the irritation.

So I'm going to take this time to restart... Get back into a work out plan, get my band adjusted on a monthly basis. I think being accountable every month will really change my whole attitude around.

The really good news in this story is that in the first four months of having my band I lost 72 or 74lbs. Over the past year I have gained 30 lbs back. That sounds really terrible but it is actually a victory for me.. Until now I've always gained 110% + back within months. I'm going to forgive myself for the weight gain and keep on trucking! I'd like to get down to 200 lbs by my 2 year bandiversary!

No News Until Thursday!

Dr. Yoo said he could see me on Thursday! So I guess it's not a huge concern for him which is cool with me. Yesterday was tough, all liquids was easy because if how I felt, but I also had 3 fillings removed and replaced. Top that with a headache and I was ready to go to bed early last night.

Hopefully today is better! Sticking with my protein and water diet today. At least Ill lose a good amount of weight this week!

Slipped? Hopefully.

A week or so ago, I was driving to work and said a desperate prayer asking God to take over for me because I clearly cannot control my issue with eating. I needed help to stop my obsessive overeating and I needed motivation to get moving and work out. I haven't completely failed at this band thing, but I will if something doesn't change.

The will power from saying that prayer lasted about a half a day and I fell back into my daily binge. Just like a damn drug addict I would imagine.

Friday night, I drank a margarita and something felt weird about it. Sometimes when I drink out of a straw I get tight and gassy feeling, but this one was a little more uncomfortable. I ate a little dinner afterwards and boxed up the rest.

The next day I didn't eat until about 3:00. Took one bite and felt stuck. Not horrible stuck, just do-not-put-another-bite-near-your-mouth-for-at-least-5-minutes-stuck.

Later that night I started feeling weird. My esophagus felt swollen and I felt like I had something stuck in my throat. I tried drinking cold water, hot water with honey, and I drank as much of it as possible. I didn't say anything for a while because I was honestly thinking that I was going to die. It didn't hurt, it was just alarmingly odd feeling. I felt like I was going to go to sleep and die in my sleep. I'm not trying to be dramatic at all... That's what was going through my head in a calm weird way.

So I tried to play it cool all night and I was so worried about going to sleep, I laid down and it felt
even worse. At around midnight I decided to go to the ER. The thought of going to Duke and facing all of the people that cheered me on while I lost 74 pounds made my stomach twist in knots and I cried like an embarassed little kid.

Luckily the ER wasn't busy. After sitting in the waiting room for an hour i was feeling a little but better not as sore and swollen. Once we got into a room, the doctor was really weird to me, it was very apparent that even though I had the surgery in that same hospital ... Absolutely no one there really understood what a lap band was.

My biggest fear was that I had a dialated esophagus and that I would have to get the band taken out. The ER doctor said that he would take chest xrays and maybe we should do an EKG. He asked me what I thought about it and I told him to start with the band because I really only felt pain in my esophagus. He responded with, "ok SCREW the EKG...we won't do that."

I thought that was the strangest statement I've ever heard from a doctor in my life... But it was almost 2:00 in the morning and he clearly wasn't interested in fat people's problems.

After my X-ray he said he talked to the bariatric surgeon and he's not sure, but he thinks my band may have slipped a bit. The surgeon said I could wait until 7:00 am for him to come in because it wasn't an emergency, or I could go to his office on Monday. He said he needs to take some fluid out and it should go back into place.

I asked him if my esophagus looked swollen or dialated and he said no.... but I'm honestly not convinced he could really tell either way.

I'm sad and ashamed of myself. I have a pit in my stomach thinking about facing everyone in the doctors office. I've seen the disapproving looks of too many doctors in my life who have noticed my weight losses and subsequent gains.

Today i feel a little better. i started back on the same diet regimen they gave me post op. liquid Protein and hydration all with no more than 10 sugars per 8 oz. I've taken the tiniest sips and have to stop frequently.

It's actually been good. In fact I've been thinking about it a lot today and its funny how life works. A couple of weeks ago I had an intern lie to me and I caught him. He was quite embarassed and I remember thinking about how I hoped that he learned a lesson from it..I distinctively said, "the most embarassing moments are sometimes the moments that change you for the better."

I think it's quite clever how I asked God to take over and this is what has happened. My words seem to be the only thing ill be eating this week.

Praying for a simple slip that can be fixed with the removal of some saline. Also a chance to start over with renewed motivation.