We are in MN, staying with Ryan's family.  Today Bob and Larry Kastel went to the state fair for a few hours.  Becky and I stayed at their house and I used her light table to trace patterns onto fabric for the 2 baby quilts.  After that, we went to Panera for lunch.  Then to a favorite quilt shop in Anoka.  I bought fabric and a pattern for a handbag and some fabric for the baby quilt backs.  The feeling I get in such quilt stores is exactly what I felt as a child when I went into the neighborhood store/candy to buy candy.  DROOL!!!!  It's a magic world.

After dinner, we played dominoes the rest of the evening.  What a great time!!!

Becky and I both had gastric bypass.  Becky got all of her excess weight off and then gained maybe 30 lbs. back, but she fits normal sizes.  As noted earlier, I foraged my way back up to and beyond my pre-surgery weight.  That happens to lots of GB patients, but they are not the ones the surgeons boast about.  You don't see pictures of us in the literature in the bariatric surgeons office.  Anyway, Becky is one of my closest friends.  And her husband us one of Bob's closest friends.

I didn't have breakfast because I got up only with time enough to get dressed and comb my hair before we left to get to Kastel's house.  Lunch was soup and pasta salad and a whole grain roll.  Water to drink.  Dinner was tacos at Becky's.  Crystal Light to drink.  I didn't eat much today, which was probably not the best.  I should have planned it.  But it is a holiday weekend, and we were very busy.  So when in doubt, I left it out.  (Food, that is.)

Will be glad to weigh next Wed morning.  Hope I drop a couple of pounds!

I am getting so impatient.  Supposedly we get more patient as we age.  I think we just move slower and mistake that for patience.

August 12 was 17 days ago.  Weighed 318 that day.   This morning I recorded 316, but that was with the water retention the lasix hadn't yet cleared.   I could probably minus a pound or two and say today's wt is 314.5.  But over 2 weeks, I've lost only 3.5 lbs!!!   That is sooooooo pitiful!


We will return to Watertown next Tuesday.  I will weigh late Wednesday morning after the lasix effect is over.  That will be my lowest weight of the day.  (I have been recording my weight from that time of day here in the blog.)  I can guarantee my lowest weight by taking these measures after taking lasix:
     1)  not drinking anything until after urination has stopped
     2)  not eating anything until after urination has stopped
     3)  weighing naked (!)

I routinely do 1 and 2.  I routinely weigh wearing underwear and a light gown.  I need to stop obsessing about how to see my lowest weight.  My greatest fear is that I will step on the scale and 3 or 4 pounds will have jumped back on!  I would like to weigh under 300 ASAP!!!  Today Bob and I weigh about the same.  He is over 6 feet and looks just awful.  That means at 5'4" I must look like Jabba the Hutt.  I avoid full length mirrors and look into any mirror only briefly.  I get sick when I see pictures of myself.  That is not who I am inside.  I think my weight is what makes me have trouble sleeping Saturday nights: my church friends will see me. I dread putting on a dress and trying to make my hair interesting enough to distract from my piles of flab.  I am trapped inside.

Tomorrow will be a better day, as Scarlet O'Hara says.

I know God loves me.  I don't deserve it.  

Turns out that I lied.  I did not weigh myself after the lasix pill was done doing its magic.  We spent the morning getting ready to leave for MN, which included Bob frying up some Little Smokies and making me eat half of them.  (Humor/sarcasm; I am responsible for what I eat, not Bob.)  I LOVE sausages, and he browned them just the way I love.  It is actually "blacking" them as I grew up with a mother who cooked the living daylights out of meat to kill the "trichinosis" that was undoubtedly in every speck of it back in the 1940s and 50s when she was raising her brood.  So YUMMY on this morning's sausage.

I must admit I DID weigh myself shortly after taking the lasix.  (Maybe after my first urination.)  And I weighed 316, wearing my housecoat.  Bummer.  But still NOT 348!

Amen!

Yesterday I was disappointed that I was plateauing.  Then today I ate a sandwich with 2 slices of bread.  After a grease fire in the oven, we took our dinner guests (the LDS missionaries from our branch) out to eat at the luxurious Burger King! I had a Whopper Junior, small fries, and diet soda.  Next week, we plan to fix the same menu and be very careful when putting the chicken into the oven.  Then we can feed the missionaries our potatoes in the oven along with Martha Logan chicken, which is cooked first in a frying pan and then baked in the oven.  The fresh broccoli we hadn't started to steam when the fire occurred we will take with us to MN this weekend.

Anyway, back to the plateau. . . .   Eating about 3/4 lb of grapes for breakfast helped me "feed" my impatience over the plateau.  The bread I ate today, while not really an awful wandering off my plans in following the DASH diet, made me feel kind of guilty.  But I was brave and stepped on the scale this afternoon, and was amazed to see I had dropped a pound since yesterday morning!!!  I wonder if I would have lost more if I had not eaten so much.

So I will weigh tomorrow morning before we depart for our drive to MN.  I will weigh again when we return next Tuesday.  Today's afternoon weight was 312.4.  Will it be higher in the morning?  I hope not.

Can hardly wait to get back from the holiday weekend and open a rec center membership!  Looking forward to building up my lung power and endurance by starting on a stationary bike!

Hope to learn about doing pictures from my son Ryan this weekend.  Bringing the laptop with when we visit.

313 again.  It would be nice to lose a pound a day, but it's rare.  You hear on TV ads how so-and-so lost 100 lbs in 90 days.  And you see how so-and-so lost lbs and lbs of belly fat after using certain pills or a certain belly band while exercising.  But my real life is less remarkable.  Yes, I feel a bit down that I haven't lost faster.  But my goal of being in the 290s by September 25 lifts me up.  Short term goals keep us on track best.  If I make 145 my only goal, 168 lbs is what I need to shed!!!  And seeing that I STILL need to take off more than half of my body weight is pretty deflating!!

But on the other hand, when I get to 145, I will have lost 203 lbs from the highest weight I can admit to.   My highest on the scale was 348, but that was after I had had the flu for a couple of days, so was most likely dehydrated.  That was the reason I felt safe to weigh that day last spring.  It was probably the least I could weigh at that time.

So 35 lost.  But then, I have lost that amount several times in the past few years.  But then I would put it back.  My bariatric surgeon told me when I went in for an annual check that if I hadn't had the surgery I'd probably weigh 500 lbs!  I told myself that is what he needed to tell himself.

Lots of things going on today.  Miranda says she will be over.  I have to type up the program for the Primary sacrament service presentation.  I have to make several batches of suckers.  I should embroider at least one quilt square center.  I have 34 to do for the 2 baby quilts for babies due Oct 28 and Dec 3.

I'm tired just thinking of what is coming up today!

Well, I didn't post my weight Monday, August 26.  The reason is that I ate a bunch of grapes for breakfast and thought that much food would change my weight enough to make it inaccurate in comparison to earlier weight-ins.

I can hardly wait until I get below 300.  I'm getting excited!  I expect I am the only person who ever got excited about that weight goal!

The first of September is nearly here, which means we get to join the rec center soon.  I can hardly wait to exercise.  I'll start on a stationary bike to build up some lung power and then go on from there.  I will see about hiring someone to set me up on a scheduled plan after that.

I have an appt with my cardiologist September 10.  It will show a good weight loss!  Not GREAT, like I had hoped.  But it took me longer than it should have to get off sugared soft drinks.

Yesterday after church, Bob and I were invited to Mark and Nancy Lueck's house.  They fed us, Stan and Sheila Lamb, and the missionaries, Elder Aschcroft and Elder Hala'ufia.  We had some crispy fried flour tortillas topped with refried beans, vegetables, sour cream, and a choice of salsas.  Nancy had made creme broulet for the first time and used a blow torch to make the sugar into a crackling top, right there at the kitchen counter.  So I ate everything I was offered, except for the sugared KoolAid.  I was very moderate and was satisfied.  But the dessert creme broulet came in custard cups and I ate it all.  Later in the evening, I finished off the potato salad that was left over from Friday when we fed the missionaries dinner here.  Bad decision!  But I'm forgiving myself and carrying on from here.

This morning my blood sugar was 144.  My weight was 316 a half hour ago, but I know that will come down after the lasix pill, which I took this morning, has finished doing its daily job.  I'll post today's weight in a couple of hours.

Today I'm planning to make lollipops so I can send some to Mary in Utah and have some for Bob and for taking with for kids and grandkids when we go to MN Thursday.  I am not tempted by the suckers.  I do enjoy smelling them as I mix and pour them.  I also plan to cut more fabric for the baby quilts.  There is something very calming and therapeutic about that.  Strange, eh?

Today I weighed in at 313!  I pray for the strength and resolve to keep eating wisely.  I'll write more later if I make time to do so.  Had a great day at church and are going to eat with friends this afternoon. I think I'm okay to eat reasonably.  But I go there with a prayer in my heart.

I've been weighing myself often, sometimes even 5 or 6 times a day.  I've also been taking my lasix every day.  Today I weigh 314.

I do need to add exercise, but am still waiting for Bob, who decided that we needed to wait until September 1 because of income.  We've been paying on the AC, so ran out of available money in August.  We don't want to dip into savings, saving it for true emergencies or major, needed purchases.  If he doesn't want to start our rec center membership September 1, I'm going to go over and sign us up from my checking account.  I get SSA money deposited on the fourth Wednesday of the month.

It looks like every year or two I renew broken vows of the past about controlling my diet, exercise, and weight.  Kind of pitiful!  So let's see how long this one lasts.  I pray it lasts the rest of my life.

Today I pronounce myself 316.  I weigh a little less with only my underwear, plus/minus 2.  This is the weight from my accurate scale, 3 hours after taking my lasix.   316 is 2 lbs less than I weighed before lasix.  It is 2 lbs more than what I weigh with only underwear.

So this is all boring, and I hope I'm the only one reading it!

Janie showed me the TV show American Ninja Warrior.  I LOVE it.  It is young men and some women who have trained to run a course of physical strength, balance, endurance, etc.  It is exhilarating to see them go through so much and either fall short or complete the course.  It shows me that our bodies can be made very strong.  And so it is kind of a reminder to me that I can build myself up, though not as far because of my age.  I wouldn't ever have tried to be as strong as those training for the show in the first place, but I tell myself I can improve my strength and health.

In the past--the now-far past--I exercised to tapes and DVDs and did improve.  I also was at a health club and got strong and better lung capacity from that exercising.  What I miss now is physical exercise.

Today I can hardly walk from the parking lot into the store without huffing and puffing.  I am always aware of the location of the next place I can sit down and catch my breath.  With my excess weight, it is like I am pulling around a 150 pound dead person on a stretcher tied to my shoulders!  A visual I remember seeing on TV is someone pulling an old porcelain bath tub of 200 pounds to show what it is like to be obese.

I'm going to stop talking now.  I can't stop thinking about my past efforts.  I need to go pray again.  They say the best predictor of future actions is past actions.  I'm not going to predict.  I'm going to ask help and learn.

Today I weigh 317, a few hours after taking the lasix and urinating a lot.  I recorded 318.6 before the pill.  Then I drank and ate some before that final weight.

I would write more, but Jeopardy is on and then I have to do laundry and get ready for RS meeting tonight on journaling and family history.

I haven't use our blog for more than 2 years!!!  I'm not going to notify anyone that I am blogging again. In stead, I am using this to log my dietary and exercise goings-on.  So this is really a blog just to myself.  I doubt I will include pictures because I don't know how.

I will call today, DAY 1.

Bob had me write him a list of what to buy at the grocery store.  He shopped early in the day, and since I was still urinating every 20 minutes or so because of the lasix pill I take every morning, he went alone.  But he did a good job getting what I wrote.  (Note:  Some days I do not take lasix.  Some days I take it in the evening because I am usually home and awake that time of day.  I should take it once a day, but I am not always a compliant patient.)  This morning I had my last ounces of sugared soda pop.

I decided to use the DASH diet and bought the book on Kindle last week.  Now, I have read about and attended classes about how to eat properly.  Like most Americans, I truly know what I ought to eat!  I have lost 30 pounds and regained it back and forth for years.  Anyway, I pray to be successful NOW because I am declining in strength and endurance as I age.  And I want to live to enjoy Bob during our retirement and to be around to watch the grandchildren grow.  And to be of used to the Lord here in Watertown SD.

I am brave enough today to write down my weight.  I weighed in earlier today at 318.  The highest I have ever known I weighed was 348.  I might have weighed more.  348 was spring of this year, 2013.  I started a new medication, which really cut my appetite and made me feel nauseous for a number of weeks.  That started my recent weight loss.  I had gotten down to 312, and obviously got my appetite back and put back 6 lbs or so.

Because of the lasix, I can lose 4-6 lbs in a few hours immediately after taking the pill and urinating.  I don't usually urinate much in the evening when I take the pill in the morning.

End of my true confession for the day.  If anyone reads this, let me know.  I'm curious.  But my assumption is that after these years NOT writing, no one will.