by Me | Feb 17, 2019 | Exercise, Food & Diet, Milestones, Post-Surgery
5 Months now since my Gastric Bypass Operation and I have reached another Milestone.
I am finally down to 100Kg …
Losing now more than 30Kg
I have not been down to this weight since 2003 – more than 15 years ago !!!!
Time to hit the Gym….
I have been increasing daily exercise for a while… mostly walking… but I promised myself that once I had reached 100Kg I would join a gym and start building up my exercise regime.
I decided that I’d like to focus on boxing type exercises… but had visited a couple of local boxing gyms and they were pretty hard core… I was not that interested in actually hitting anyone (or getting hit for that matter), but I did like the types of exercises involved.
I wanted to primarily do some upper body toning and body core workouts… and thought that boxing/skipping exercises would be a good start.
12 Rounds Fitness
I checked around and discovered that my sister had (for months) been going to a gym called 12 Rounds Fitness. This is based around circuit training, with 12 different “stations” setup, each with 2 different exercises.
You arrive at whatever time you like, start at an available station of your choice, and spend 3 minutes exercise at each station, before moving onto the next. The types of exercises at each station change daily, and you are able to push it as hard as you like, or “tweak” the exercises to cater for specific exercise targets (or injuries).
I found that during the first session a pre-existing back injury flared up again, so I have been able to focus on low impact and upper body exercises… and my back seems to be improving…
Interestingly, despite (or perhaps because of) significantly increasing my exercise program (and as far as I am aware not changing my food intake much), instead of losing additional weight, in the 2 weeks since I started I have actually gained 1.2 Kg.
Blood Sugar & Diabetes
I also recently re-visited my endocrinologist – hopefully for the very last time… The previous visit my hbA1c reading (which measures the average blood sugar over a three month period) was just a smidgen above 6.0 (6.1 actually)… and I was hoping that this time it would be below 6.0 and in the “normal” range… However, it was back up to 6.4 – despite the fact that I had lost another 6Kg š …
So it seems that diabetes is still lurking around, so I still need to keep a close eye on it…
I suspect that despite eating much less than I used to (I reckon it is about 1/3rd) I am being less careful about the types of things I am eating. Although I am eating significantly less Carbs, I need to focus a bit better on less sugary foods (i.e. cut out soft drink and Fruit drinks, which I now realise I had started having more of)…
by Me | Aug 27, 2018 | Milestones, Pre-Surgery
Had a great (but brief) chat today with an ex-girlfriend of mine (from nearly 30 years ago) – lets call her Nelly.
Nelly has had a pretty much life long battle with weight (including a 20Kg weight gain within 12 months following the death of her mum), but finally (after a great deal of umming and ahhing) decided to go ahead with Gastric Sleeve Surgery in September last year (2017).Ā She was VERY nervous in the lead up to the operation and very nearly cancelled it… But she has never looked back and wishes she had done it sooner.
Nelly apparently had lots of friends who had had various Bariatric Procedures over the years, but was still very nervous that her operation would be “the one” where everything went wrong…She need not have worried because now, coming up to 12 months after her op. she has lost 55Kg.
Nelly had 3 weeks of meal replacement prior to surgery, but found this pretty easy to manage, because she was focused on the operation and understood the reasons (and benefits) of the pre-surgery diet.Ā Following surgery, she was on liquid diet for about 3 weeks and then mush for another few weeks… It was 3-4 months before she was able to start eating “real food”, and even then it was in very small portions and there was a long learning curve on what and how much she could eat without feeling uncomfortable.
Nelly was never particularly exercise focused or sporty, but now finds she wants to get out with her kids and and exercise more often…It is amazing how much extra energy you seem to have when you lose that much weight in a short period…. The body is used to dragging around a lot more extra weight.
Now she is starting to think about loose skin… Her arms and even wrists (and other bits I presume) now have saggy skin which are likely to improve somewhat over time, but could also be treated surgically for a faster more effective confidence boost.
Looking forward to a much longer chat to learn more about her experience š
by Me | Jun 19, 2018 | Milestones
Today, I lost my sense of taste !!!!
I woke up, had breakfast as normal, but when I had lunch, thought I had forgotten to salt my cheese/tomato crackers… I hadn’t….. I had lost almost all my sense of taste !!!
I can taste a hint of sweetness in some things, but have almost no salty taste at all…. I can put salt on my tongue without any taste of saltiness.
I sometimes crave savoury things, but if (for example) i try some hot chips, or babrbecue shapes… they are just a massive flavourless disappointment.
My “favourite” foods at the moment tend to be things whithout a lot of flavour (e.g. ham/cheese sandwich) because theye are not such a let downwhen they dont taste of much….Ā My favouritte food is probably carrots becasue they have a subtle flavour and LOTS of texture…
Apparent;y loss of taste is not that unusual, but it is usually associated with a cold and returns once the cold recovers… as far as i can recall I didnlt have a cold at the time, and I also hadnlt started on any new medications (latest new med I started 3 weeks prior… and have subsequently stopped it with no effect).
My smell doesn’t seem to be affected (in fact if anything it seems to be enhanced, (but this could be compensation for the loss of taste) and I don’t seem to have any other “nerve” related issues (no tingling, no sagging facial muscles, no vision issues, no headaches).Ā Sometimes my taste seems to be improving, but that may just be that I am getting used to it.
My GP and Endocrinologust found this quite “interesteing” – it was something a bit out of the ordinary to them…they did some research and ordered up a series of blood tests – which didn’t show up anything unusual. Nex step is an Eear Nose & Throat specialist…. and then possibly a Neourologist.
I no longer find it “interesting” – it is really not very much fun at all when you can’t tell the difference (apart from textrure) between a slice of cheese, a slice of bacon, or a slice of apple pie !!! and the prospect of maybe not being able to taste anything ever again is not very pleasent – although I am hopefull that at some stage it may reappear as mysterouiusly as it disappeared.
I have not been that intetested in eating and have started many meals, only to get half way through and deciding there was no point in finishing. They say every cloud has a silver lining… and my reduction in food intake has certainly had a positive effect on my weight (lost 8kg in 8 weeks) and blood sugar levels (regularly under 5 – which had never happend before – so I have had to monitor closely and drop my med dosages accoridngly.
Now (8 weeks or so later) it is no better – in fact in just thel ast few days I have developed a cold, and it has actually got worse š
In terms of my Bypass operation, I donlt know yet if loss of tastes is going to help or hinder the dietary constraints in the leadup to (2 weeks OptiFast meal replacement) and followup (2m eeks liquids, 2 weeks mush)… but assume that after a month or so of liquids/mush I will be craving “texture” so much that the couch will start to look appetising.
by Me | Aug 21, 2014 | Milestones
B-Day minus 1491 days
I had some luck on the Lotto earlier this year and booked a couple of penthouses for a couple of weeks with friends on the 41st floor of Q1 on the Gold Coast š
I didn’t know at the time, but I was soon to be diagnosed with Type II Diabetes.
by Me | Aug 14, 2013 | Milestones
B-Day minus 1856 days
50th Birthday… what a Milestone…Ā but how did that come up so fast ??
I was pretty Happy with my Life (although realised by now that I was significantly overweight).. also started to notice that my body wasn’t quite as good at doing some of the things that I used to take for granted.
Treated myself to two weeks Photo Tour of Cambodia – LOVED it.
Hmm… just reliased that all my birthday posts seem to feature Birthday Cakes… I dont really LIKE cake that much .. but perhaps this is symptomatic of my like of sweet carbs…
by Me | Aug 21, 2012 | Milestones
B-Day minus 2222 days
A little before my 49th birthday, someone I had considered a āclose friendā who I had spent a lot of time with over the previous 12 months or so, decided – seemingly out of the blue – that we should no longer keep in touch..
She had a whole lot of emotional issues going on at the time, with a messy marriage.. and financial concernsā¦ so I donāt blame her, she had to get herself sorted outā¦ However I was more emotionally attached than I had realised and it hit me hardā¦.
I put on close to 20 kilos over the next 12 months or so,Ā which was the most significant weight change I had experienced in my life…. It’s only recently that I realised how much weight I had gained so quickly over this period… and I recognise now that I was probably suffering a little from depression.
