It’s has been so long since I’ve writ­ten here. Longer than I would have liked.  So let me catch you up.

I men­tioned in my last post that I would con­tinue work­ing out as much as my knees could han­dle. Unfor­tu­nately, as soon as I pub­lished that entry an old enemy sneaked up on me and caused my work­outs to halt. I suf­fer from the resid­ual injuries of hav­ing been an ath­lete in my younger years. I played var­i­ous sports includ­ing, bas­ket­ball, vol­ley­ball, and soft­ball, all of which are very hard on the knees. In my junior year of high school I suf­fered Patel­lar dis­lo­ca­tion in which my kneecap was pushed to the side. For years it would pop in and out of posi­tion and caused me to give up on my dream of mak­ing it to the [W]NBA.  I also shat­tered my other kneecap about a year later and had to have frag­ments removed. Need­less to say, the added weight has not helped my knees one bit. And so, after a pretty decent work­out in May, I hurt my knee so badly that even sit­ting was painful. No surgery needed, but was required to stop with the cardio/aerobic exer­cises until my knees were no longer swollen.

It was awful. I had focused on main­tain­ing this rou­tine that would help me shed the weight and now I was no longer able to do it. I tried to stay pos­i­tive, but being prone to depres­sion and self-destructive behav­iors like bing­ing and then not eat­ing at all, I relapsed gain­ing back 6 pounds. now I know that doesn’t seem like a lot, but los­ing the 22.4 pounds was such an accom­plish­ment for me that gain­ing 6 back seemed like such a big defeat.

This past month was an exer­cise in per­sonal com­bat. I have been fight­ing the voice that tells me to pack it in and give up. The voice that urges me to reward myself for sim­ple things like not eat­ing all of the Ben & Jerry’s in one sit­ting by eat­ing the rest of it. And while at times it seemed tough, I have to admit that since June 20thm I am doing alright.

I have been snack­ing on health­ier food. I have been eat­ing a large salad with that slice of pizza when we order it. I have beaten back my binge-buddies and refused to give into the same rou­tine that has got­ten me here. I am con­tin­u­ing to take my thy­roid meds and ensur­ing that I awake the same time every morn­ing so that I can find other ways of being active. I have been doing strength train­ing when I can and have been research­ing how to live a cleaner life.

I also got a new job. I am a social media man­ager for a major restau­rant chain. And the funny thing is that doing this has made me hate eat­ing food that is not home­made. It’s not that their food is that bad but talk­ing about it all day is def­i­nitely a turn off. I have also been ridicu­lously busy now between the job and ensur­ing that my fam­ily is more active.  I have cut back on blog­ging and on tweet­ing so that I could stop talk­ing about what I want to do and actu­ally do it. This means I am no longer an active mem­ber of Mama­va­tion (and no it’s not because I did not win). It is because sit­ting on the com­puter or on my phone required me to take time away from doing the things that I need to do to keep myself on the right path. I will be bet­ter at sup­port­ing the sis­ters because I know how much it works, but I can­not com­mit to writ­ing post every week until I can get back on my schedule.

Today I was given the OK to start exer­cis­ing again and I did so with a vengeance. I used EA Sports Active for Wii an cus­tomized a box­ing pro­gram that ran for 54:13 sec­onds. I burned approx­i­mately 1026.4 calo­ries. I was sweaty and smelly and feel­ing bet­ter than I had in a while. I can;t wait until my next box­ing work­out on Sun­day. I am going to do some strength train­ing tomor­row to give my knees a rest.

I am still here and focused. and deter­mined to lose the weight.

Share and Enjoy:

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So the com­ments from co-workers who have noticed my weight­loss have continued…

It is a lit­tle annoy­ing, but for comedic fod­der, I’ll post some here:

- You are too skinny. Stop los­ing; I’m jealous.

–Stop being ridiculous.

- Are you sup­posed to be eat­ing that?

– Did you ever make com­ments on what I ate before? You’re not wel­come to make them now.

- Wow. You look great. You seem a lot more active and happy.

– Yeah, because I was a bump on a log before and all I did was eat.

- Hey. how ya feelin today? Oh, me? A lit­tle tired.  You shouldn’t be tired because you’re skinny. I bet you were a lot more tired when you were fatter.

–Yeah because all fat peo­ple are lazy and tired all the time.

- Don’t eat that. You’re gonna get fat.

–I whip out my before pic nad I say, oh you mean like this? Shut him up real quick

To which I wish I could say to all of ya’ll, fam­ily included…kiss my ass, but I love you, so I’ll just tell you how I feel and shut you up.

I am down 105 lbs so far.  Delish!

Weight Update: 374.6

Total weight lost: 22.4 pounds

*I am pic­ture­less (sorry). I took a pic­ture and then noticed that my toes were just too jacked up to be posted on the Inter­net. I need a pedi­cure badly! I was not expect­ing to have lost any­thing because my eat­ing habits were not as great as they have been. In addi­tion, I am retain­ing water and feel extremely bloated. This hap­pens a lot to me when the weather is humid and I have to rely on asthma meds more. I am going to weight myself again on Sat­ur­day to see if there is a change.  I will take a pic­ture then.

I wrote before about this jour­ney being about more than weight loss. While I need to lose weight, I also want my lifestyle to be health­ier. I want to focus on cre­at­ing healthy habits and mak­ing healthy choices. The bot­tom line is that this is for my fam­ily. So, I have been spend­ing so much time out of the house get­ting active and in the Kitchen cook­ing more. And when I say that I have been cook­ing, I have really been cook­ing. Below  is one of my new favorite recipes.

But before you get to that, I need to say that I have have been seri­ously kick­ing ass! I weigh in tomor­row (Tues­day) so I will add the update there, but I FEEL so much bet­ter than I have in a long time. I am LIVING and that is all the proof that I need that I am doing this!

My goals are to con­tinue work­ing out 45–60 min­utes a day depend­ing on what my knees can han­dle; to step up the water intake because I have not been get­ting enough; and finally, I need to be bet­ter at jour­nal­ing my food intake. I have to make sure I see exactly what I am eat­ing so I can’t lie to myself.

And now for the soup.

Kristina’s Veg­gie Bean Soup

I have become some what of a soup addict as I travel on my jour­ney to lose weight. And while the weather is get­ting warmer, I am still lov­ing a bowl (or 2 cups of soup) after a long day. Using fresh veg­eta­bles and avoid­ing canned or pre-made broth makes home­made soup a fill­ing and com­fort­ing meal. Here is my “Kristina’s Veg­gie Bean Soup” recipe.  Let me say that Swiss Chard is AMAZING! This recipe was orig­i­nally posted on Mom on the Rise and can also be found on SparkPeo­ple.

Ingre­di­ents

• Car­rots, raw, 3 medium (chopped)
• Mush­rooms, 8 fresh (chopped)
• Onions, raw, 2 medium (chopped)
• Gar­lic, 4 clove (chopped)
• Cel­ery, raw, 1 stalk, large (chopped)
• Red Ripe Toma­toes, 2 medium (chopped)
• Swiss Chard, 3 cup, chopped (chop stems and tear leaves; keep separate)
• Leeks, 5 leek (chopped)
• Aspara­gus, fresh, 3 spear, medium (chopped)
• Potato, raw, 3 large (chopped)
• Beans, great north­ern, 1.5 cup (dry and presoaked)
• Olive Oil, Extra Vir­gin, 2 tbs
• Water, tap, 8 cup (64 oz)
• Sage, ground, .5 tbsp
• Thyme, ground, .5 tbsp
• Cin­na­mon, ground, .5 tsp
• Bay Leaf, 1 tbsp, crumbled
• Adobo Goya, 0.25 tsp
• Pep­per, black, .5 tbsp

Direc­tions

• Serv­ing size is 2 cups. Should make 10 servings.
• Sauté onion, gar­lic, car­rots, leeks, cel­ery. mush­rooms, toma­toes, and aspara­gus in olive oil using a large stock pot or dutch oven.
• Add all remain­ing veg­gies except for the pota­toes, Chard leaves. DO NOT ADD BEANS YET.
• Add enough water to just cover the veg­gies and add all spices/seasoning.
• Bring to a boil and then sim­mer for 1 hour.
• Add beans and pota­toes and the remain­ing water.
• Stir and allow to sim­mer for 2 hours. Be sure to stir and check water level peri­od­i­cally . Add more water as needed. Soup should be brothy not thick.
• When soup has fin­ished cook­ing add Swiss Chard leaves and cover fro 10 min­utes. Serve in bowl.

Num­ber of Serv­ings: 10 | Serv­ing Size 2 cups | Here is the nutri­onal info

There are a lot of peo­ple who don’t know WHAT to say when some­one they know loses a lot of weight. I can tell you right now what NOT to say…

- You should keep your clothes in case you gain.
– Oh, so now you’re the expert on weight loss?
– You did it the easy way
– You look so much younger now
– Wow, I bet all the guys are hit­ting on you now
– Now don’t start cheat­ing around

It’s hilar­i­ous when some women pull their men a lit­tle closer because I’ve lost a few lbs. I didn’t want him then and I darn sure don’t want him now.

I don’t mind the occa­sional, “Skinny Bitch” now as long as it’s said with love

I apol­o­gize for my absence. It has been a crazy cou­ple of weeks and I have not really had much time, energy, or desire to blog. Some­times it feels like I spend too much time tweet­ing and blog­ging about what I want and need to do and very lit­tle time actu­ally doing. So, I have been lim­it­ing com­puter time.

I have been spend­ing as much time engag­ing in phys­i­cal activ­ity as pos­si­ble be it the park, or walk­ing in the neigh­bor­hood. And while I have not been exer­cis­ing the way that I wanted to, I have been doing well with eat­ing bet­ter (except for the week that I was fight­ing the female woes). Nonethe­less, my choices have been pay­ing off! Check it out:

DOWN 22 POUNDS SINCE MARCH 1

Weight loss surgery is such a hard deci­sion to come to.  I was the sort of per­son who was always active and mov­ing around. I nmy head  Iwas as bad as “that” girl.…but really  Iwas …

My cho­les­terol, blood pres­sure and triglyc­erides at 34 years old were ele­vated, and I was on my way to an early demise.

In the inter­est of chron­i­cling, let’s go back to June 2009.

Before June 2009, I researched WLS and even went to a meet and greet of women from a weight loss surgery sup­port group back in 2003.  I was too scared to go under the knife.  I knew about the gas­tric bypass and that is what I wanted to pur­sue. I con­sid­ered myself weak, and felt like I could lose weight on my own.

Fast­for­ward 6 years later, after Weight Watch­ers 3 times, LA Weight­Loss, Nutrisys­tem 2x.‘s, a med­ically super­vised very low calo­rie diet and count­less “restart Mon­days”, I bal­looned from 213 to 250, then lost 8 lbs since the begin­ning of 2009.

6.13.09
Sev­eral friends have had WLS, and bump­ing into 3 of them at one party got me to think­ing about con­sid­er­ing surgery again. I have been see­ing my doc­tor for a com­mu­nity weight loss/health ini­tia­tive, and I have been con­sis­tently exer­cis­ing and try­ing to con­trol what I eat, but I feel like the surgery will help restrict my caloric intake and help me get to my goals.

6.16.09
Sent an email to my pri­mary care doc, let­ting her know that I was inter­ested in WLS. She said she would do what­ever I needed in order to get me approved. She felt like i was a good candidate.

6.18.09
I attended an infor­ma­tion ses­sion at a local hos­pi­tal.  At the last minute, my babysit­ter fell through, and my hus­band was not able to attend. I really wished he could to hear all the infor­ma­tion out there.  One thing that struck me is that obese peo­ple have a 400% chance of get­ting dia­betes. With an A1C myself of 5.9, I am well on my way to being a sta­tis­tic.  I want to reverse that.  I have an appoint­ment on 6.30 with the RN at the prac­tice to have a pre-op meeting.

6.19.09
I con­tacted my insur­ance com­pany about cov­er­age for the pro­ce­dure. (Aetna) said it was cov­ered pro­vided that I have a BMI over 40, need to lose over 100 lbs or have co-morbidities like high blood pres­sure or sleep apnea.  I’d like to get approved for the Ver­ti­cal Sleeve Gas­trec­tomy because I am ane­mic already and I do not want to mal­ab­sorp­tion that comes with the RnY.  I also hear that there are so many peo­ple who are get­ting revi­sions to their surgery due to the band. I don’t wanna get on the “band-wagon” AT ALL.

I pray that God opens doors for me and that all is revealed in my pre-op test­ing and psych test­ing to help me to be as safe and suc­cess­ful as pos­si­ble.  I pray for a smooth process from begin­ning to end with the med­ical and per­sonal sup­port I need to keep it moving!

In about 8 weeks, I went from 255 to 199. WOW! I thought there would be char­i­ots com­ing from the sky and trum­pets. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am elated, but I am still fat. Any­one else would be jump­ing for joy about this great mile­stone, but I really started look­ing at how far I have to go–at least that’s what my heart says.

My head says dammit, I have come a LONG way. I sur­vived MAJOR surgery and all of my fac­ul­ties are intact. I am alive and every­thing is kosher. It’s the bat­tle of the mind that I have to con­quer. I’d love to be able to get to 138, that dri­vers license num­ber. Now that I am ONE-something, it seems so much more obtain­able.  That would mean only 61 more lbs.  I lost 55 in 2 months. I will prob­a­bly be at goal in a few more months.  Head, talk to my heart.  Tell her that we are gonna be ALLLLRIGHT!

I am not gonna mess this up. I am not gonna fail.  So many times I have had these num­bers in my head with rewards all along the way, and never really got “there”.  I am almost there.

Last week was the most active I have been in MONTHS. Maybe even years. We started Sun­day and did not stop again until Wednes­day. The halt in activ­ity was because I have a lit­tle fluid around my knee and have to take it easy. So, I have been focus­ing on my eat­ing habits. I have been meet­ing my caloric-intake each day although some­times I barely reach it. I am still learn­ing that I can eat, just dif­fer­ently. I tweeted about how hard it was for me to keep my sodium intake in an accept­able range. It is hard (no canned toma­toes, ever!) but again I am learn­ing. I did have a day for slip­ping up. I ate entirely way too much corn-bread on Sat­ur­day and not much of any­thing else. BUT, I was OK with brush­ing it off and mov­ing for­ward instead of mop­ing around and eat­ing the sad­ness away. I am learn­ing to believe that I can do this.

Now for the Weigh In

I’m down another 4 POUNDS. That’s a total of 17 pounds. I am 14 pounds away from my first goal.

My Goals for the week:

• Take it easy so that my knee gets bet­ter. I have a ten­dency to push it too far.
• Con­tinue to log what I eat on Spark People.
• Increase water intake by 8oz this week.

….but change HAD to come.

I went from 249 at the begin­ning of 2009 to 255 as an all time high in November.

I started research­ing weight loss surgery about 5 years ago, and I decided that this was my year to do it. I attended an info sem­i­nar in June, and then spent the sum­mer going back and forth to the doc get­ting all the pre­lim­i­nary tests. I had the duo­de­nal switch done Novem­ber 30, 2009. To date, I have lost 50 lbs.

Med­ical Benefits:

My blood pres­sure and cho­les­terol have gone down con­sid­er­ably.
I do not snore any­more at all, and I sus­pect that when I have another sleep study that I will be free and clear of sleep apnea.

Phys­i­cal Ben­e­fits
I can use a reg­u­lar bath towel and not a bath sheet
I can cross my legs
I can run on the tread­mill for a few min­utes
I reg­is­tered to run a 5K in a few months
I went from a 20/22 top and 18/20 bot­tom, to a 14/16 top, 14 bot­tom
I am clear­ing my closet of all my larger clothes and box­ing them up to give away
My cycle has reg­u­lated itself

Emo­tional Ben­e­fits
I look younger
I have TONS more energy
I look at food differently–as fuel and not as a com­fort
I am moti­vat­ing oth­ers around me to eat bet­ter and work out more
My por­tion con­trol is affect­ing my fam­ily in a pos­i­tive way

By sum­mer, I will prob­a­bly be at my goal, but I have a life­time to re-learn how to eat and take every moment to savor this pre­cious life I have. The com­ments are com­ing out of the wood­work from men. I think it’s hilar­i­ous, but when I look back at old pic­tures, I was a puffed up ver­sion of myself. I always saw beauty when I looked in the mir­ror, but now, it’s so much more clear to me. I guess that con­fi­dence is pass­ing on to others.

My name is Jes­sica and I am over weight.

Okay so that was shall I say a lit­tle AA’ish but that is how I am tack­ling my jour­ney to lose weight. Why you might ask? Well I believe my addic­tion to food and non activ­ity is what has got­ten me and kept me here. So I fig­ure if I take an addicts approach to los­ing weight I can beat this thing. So the first step to recov­ery is admit­ting you have a prob­lem and real­iz­ing the neg­a­tive effects of that prob­lem. I love food espe­cially the bad for you kind of food. I have also been addicted to soda for, well since I was a teen. The neg­a­tive effects of all of this are the fact that I weigh 214 and am out of shape.

So I am 26 years old and mar­ried to the love of my life for just under two years. I have a son who is four and one that is nine months.  Those three men are my inspi­ra­tion and moti­va­tion for gain­ing a han­dle on my life. I want to be healthy for them and lead by exam­ple the kind of life I want them to lead. I miss hav­ing the energy to take my boys to the park or do active things with them. I keep think­ing about the pic­tures over the years and I don’t want to be the ‘fat’ mom.

So I was asked by Kristina to write and share my jour­ney with you and I hope to make her proud. You can read my progress on my blog: It’s All About the Saving’s. Until next time Exert, Hydrate, Repeat!