This day's a wash....or is it?

I cannot possibly be the only fat girl in the world who has done the following:

Wake up. Resolve to eat healthily this day. Eat a good breakfast. Say okay when your friend invites you out to lunch. Eat 4 pieces of pizza. Feel stuffed. Gross. Overfilled. And say to yourself....I BLEW THIS DAY. I will eat crap for the rest of the day and then start over tomorrow. (This is my secret for achieving the lovely weight I have now.)

Today's revelation - I eat practically NOTHING and I feel stuffed. My brain says "YOU BLEW IT GIRL", but then I catch myself. NO I DID NOT. I have a band. The band makes me feel full. I did not blow it. The day is not a wash. We are still on track. I am not a loser!!

I like my band. Too bad it didn't come with a lobotomy.

Patience....

I have no patience. I know this about myself. It is the reason that most of my previous weight loss attempts failed. I am an all or nothing girl. I can do weight watchers and take two aerobics classes back to back everyday until I step on the scale and it hasn't moved. Then I go get ice cream and eat everything off the Chili's menu. And throw away all the work I put in.

A couple of observations made yesterday:

1. I will NEVER again be able to throw in the towel with the same gusto as before (band says NO to the entire Chili's menu) - so why bother giving up? Just stay the course.

2. I need to stop weighing myself twice a day. I have resolved to only weigh myself on Friday mornings. This in and of itself will create the need to be patient.

3. I have NEVER EVER EVER lost one pound per week GUARANTEED for one full year. NEVER. So even moving slowly with the band, will create an amazing opportunity for myself. That would be 52 lbs down in one year. Seriously, I would never be able to do that without my new friend.

4. Long time banded people are relatively normal human beings, eating relatively normal things. When I went to see my surgeon the first time he said, do you know why skinny girls are skinny? Because they stop eating. Fat girls keep eating. The experienced bandsters I see online seem to have been able to adopt this skinny girl mentality.

How's that? Come on - let's toast my discoveries with our protein shakes held high. ;)

Food....

Just when I thought I couldn't drink another thing, my 10th day post-op arrives and with it, clearance to eat soft and mushy food. If you would have told me that I would be afraid of food at this point, I would have LAUGHED and I mean LAUGHED in your face. But I am. I am afraid to do something wrong. I am afraid to put an end to this awesome daily weight loss I have experienced since I went liquid.

I ate egg salad. And I had a tablespoon of refried beans. The ground did not shake - the earth did not move. I did not hurt. I did not get sick. I also did not lose weight today.

Before I got the band, everyone always said "Remember, it's a tool." And then you talk to people at their goal weight and they are like, "It's awesome, I don't have to do anything." Well, people, I am not at the I DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING stage - I am at the obsess, freak out and worry phase. Yesterday, I spent 2 hours trying to figure out how to consume enough protein to keep my muscle and oh, some hair - all while not consuming more than 50 grams of fat. Try it - it ain't easy.

But today is a new day. A new day to get it right - to learn more - to take care of myself. Lap-band.com's quote of the day is very appropriate for my mindset, here it is:

Patience and the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown.

It is Real

I saw it. I saw it inside of me. I saw the port and the tubing snaking up through my abdomen and cinching my stomach. It's real.

I had my first esophagram today. Drank barium while they took pictures. It took 65 seconds max. But what it produced was incontrovertible evidence of the fact that I am indeed "banded." If all goes well, I will live the rest of my life with this device wrapped around the bottom of my esophagus, reminding me that no one really needs to eat a full pound of pasta. And you know what, I feel better about this than I did last week. It's good. The band accepts me and I accept the band.

Am I?

"I'm starving," says my husband as he walks past me out of our room and downstairs. And I think, "Me too." And then I think, am I? I have no idea. I mean, I don't feel hungry I guess. Then I wonder, how long have I followed him to the table? How many times have I eaten because he was starving? It's actually kind of pathetic... let's do some rough math. I have been with him for 15.5 years. Let's say I eat 3 times per week (conservatively speaking) that I was not hungry, but he was. Let's say I consumed an unneeded 400 calories every time I did this. That's 967,200 calories over 15 years....

Before I went in for surgery the other day, he said "I did this to you." He's crazy. He did not do this to me. I did this to me. He just made it okay for me to do. He made it easy for me to do.

So, now my band will make it hard for me to do. So this means that my husband and my band need to learn to work together... or to at least like each other ;)