Eight Month Surgeversary!

It’s hard to believe that it’s my eight month surgeversary. How did so much time pass by already? Eight months is literally 3/4 of a year. It’s crazy that it has passed by in the blink of an eye! I’m amazed that life has changed so much in this time; I can’t wait to fill you in on everything that’s happened since my last update!

My last update was at the six-month mark. At that point, I had lost 102 pounds, none of my clothes fit, I was exercising regularly, and I was losing my hair. Now, two months later, I’m at 187, meaning I’ve shed another 13 pounds (I had a few stalls between 6 and 8 months), bringing my total weight loss to 115 pounds. Most of my clothes fit, but I have a very limited selection. I’m continuing to exercise regularly and I’m fighting that hair loss with everything I can!

Weight, What?

Even before I get to how much weight I’ve lost in total, I have an announcement. I weight LESS than 200 pounds. Seriously. I don’t remember the last time I weighed this current weight. I think it was about 13 years ago. Literally. The day I hit 199 was only 1-2 days after my six month update, and on that day, I did a happy dance on the scale. Welcome to One-derland!!

I have officially lost 115 pounds. I’m pretty impressed. To lose that much in just eight months is no small feat. It hasn’t been easy. I seem to have an iron stomach so a lot of those “cheat foods” that adversely affect other people seem to have no affect on me. This means that when the temptation hits to indulge in some goldfish, it takes a serious amount of willpower to not eat those goldfish. And willpower doesn’t always win, unfortunately. It’s a lot of work to make sure old habits don’t creep back in.

I did have a major mishap with a low carb bagel. As I’m sure many people know, sometimes food just doesn’t agree with you. In this case, the low carb bagel was super dry, not enough cream cheese, and it wanted to come up, but it was a battle. And come up it did – and left me with broke capillaries all over my face for the better part of a week. Painful, and the reminder every time I looked in the mirror made me realize….Some foods just aren’t worth the pain!

With all of this weight loss, saggy skin is always a concern. I have been slathering “toning lotion” all over my body, although I will totally admit that I think it’s mostly hokum. I’m not sure that it works at all. I am going to try Collagen supplements and Vitamin E and see how that works instead. I’m sure I’ll have an update in a future post.

Body Movin’

I’m channeling the Beastie Boys, can you tell? I’ve mentioned this in the past, but exercise is key. It helps to tone, but most importantly, it also helps with that little issue of saggy skin. I’ve done a number of different programs, all on beachbody.com, and there have been some I likes, others not so much.

I’m currently doing 80 Day Obsession. I had put off starting this one because the workouts are on the longer side – 40-60 minutes. I have always preferred the 30 minute workouts. It’s hard to get in a long workout between getting home from work and eating dinner (especially because I’m the one cooking dinner). I’ve therefore been working out after I put my kids to bed, which is after 8pm. It’s not ideal, but it’s working.

Non-Scale Victories

My biggest non-scale victory, I think within this whole weight loss process, is the fact that I tried on my wedding dress, and it actually felt a little LOOSE! It was definitely too big in the bust (why do the boobs always shrink first??), and it was loose in the waist and hips, too. I have to say, it was maybe one of the best things that I’ve experienced through this whole process.

Just after Christmas, I went shopping and I bought a pair of knee-high boots. Now, I’ll be perfectly honest and tell you that I’ve always had trouble buying knee-high boots that actually fit over my calves. I naturally have big calves, but at my heaviest, even “wide shaft” boots didn’t fit. Well, I can tell you that I am now the proud owner of a pair of knee-high boots!!

Eight Month Wrap-up

So in the last eight months, I’ve become a different person. That’s pretty much all I have to say about that. I successfully made it through the Christmas season, New Years, and everything in between and I’ve continued to lose weight. I’m still working on keeping those old habits in the past, but I think that will be a constant thing.