Hostessing

A year ago this month, I took a cold, hard look at myself and realized I was going nowhere fast with weight loss. My weight had gotten completely out of control; at 266 pounds I was sore, tired, ashamed and grumpy most of the time. My joints ached, I was impatient with my children and husband, mortified to be around people and furious with myself for being unable to pull my act together.

I went to seminars at three different hospitals and made up my mind to get a Lap-Band. In the almost 10 months since my surgery, I've had highs and lows. I'm currently stalled in my weight loss.

But the benefits of the band, and of my thinner, healthier and much more comfortable body, continue to show themselves.

Since June, I've hosted three big, nonfamily parties at my house: One for the incoming families at my kids' preschool, one for our friends and one (last night) for our neighbors. The preschool and neighbor parties involved meeting and talking to A LOT of people I had never met before.

We do the friend party every year, so that's a given. But this year I wasn't mortified to see our friends, which was a nice change!

I know for sure that I never would have had the nerve to host the other events. In fact, last year we had several new families move to our street and I thought about having a block party but immediately pushed the thought out of my mind because I knew it would be too embarrassing to meet everyone when I was so fat.

This year I outweighed every woman at the party by at least 50 pounds, but I still felt good, and confident, and happy to meet new people and talk to our neighbors and make new friends.

That's an awesome NSV, isn't it?

'Good Enough' Syndrome

I see that many of us in blogland are struggling or feeling stuck on the scale, and Lord knows I'm in the same place. I'd blame it on the weather, except Cara's got the same thing going on and her seasons are the opposite of ours.

I think the real reason for my own sluggishness, laziness and overall lack of attention to what I'm eating is a result of 'good enough' syndrome. I've lost 60+ pounds, and while I'm nowhere near thin, I feel normal-ish. What I've lost is good enough to feel not so bad. Joey has something similar going on.

My feet and knees don't ache when I walk. I don't struggle to stand up. I can run up and down the stairs with laundry baskets and babies without being out of breath. I don't shop exclusively at fat-girl stores, although I'm not entirely at regular stores either.

Life is busy so it's easy to put my attention and effort elsewhere - into my children, their schools, my marriage, the house... whatever.

I know this isn't really good enough, though. I'm not at a healthy weight. I don't want to stop here. The journey continues.

PS No regular sugary Cokes since last week. WOOT.

Is This Thing On?

I don't like to point fingers, but someone isn't working her band. Someone is eating more than is strictly necessary, and not particularly healthy stuff. Someone has re-developed a Coke habit. Regular, sugary Coke.

Consequently, someone has gained a few pounds over the last week. Like six. 209 this morning, my friends. That's ugly.

Some of it was stress eating, some of it was being on vacation for a few days. All of it is my fault. So here I am, being accountable and whatnot.

Onward and downward.

Heartbreak, Happiness and Joy

Last Sunday afternoon, as I was packing up the puppies to go back, the phone rang. It was my friend E's mom, telling me that E's teenage daughter had killed herself that morning. Her 12-year-old son found his sister hanging in the garage.

That kicked off a whirlwind four days of shock and sorrow and sympathy and trying to figure out how to explain it to my oldest (who is good buds and classmates with E's youngest).

On Monday, I went to E's house to hug her and cry with her, and took her two youngest to my house for dinner and a playdate. My two boys and her two and another friend made pizzas and ran around with lightsabers, a little slice of normalcy in a horrible situation.

Wednesday evening, I waited in the aisle of a tiny New England church as red-eyed high schoolers and their parents walked past the girl's open casket and fell into her parents' arms, sobbing. E and her husband stood next to their child's body for four hours, comforting an unending stream of her friends, family members and classmates.

Thursday was the funeral, and it was emotionally draining, after an already emotionally demanding few days.

Friday morning I frantically packed for our long-awaited trip to Sonoma for the Hubs' cousin's wedding.

My sister called at 7 am to let me know she was in labor, and I told her she had seven hours to push that baby out before my flight took off at 3.55 pm. We didn't know whether she was having a boy or a girl, and I was dying to know.

My sister never misses a deadline. God bless her, she birthed that child - a boy! with adorably huge cheeks! - with half an hour to spare.

We had a whirlwind trip, drove through wine country, visited a winery, had a couple good meals, saw lots of Hubs' family members, went to the wedding (a whole 'nother story, but the bride and groom were glowing with happiness so that's all that matters) and then drove from the wedding Sunday night to San Francisco airport, where Hubs boarded a redeye to New York and I boarded a separate redeye to Philadelphia.

This morning, my mom picked me up at the airport, I took a nap at her house and then *finally* got to see my new, adorable nephew. I'm so proud of my sister! She had a tough labor, and aside from the hemorrhoids from hell she is rocking the postpartum gig. I spent a few hours with her, then got on a northbound train and took a taxi home from the station.

In one week, we've experienced a totally unnecessary, horrifying, tragic death, the happiness of a couple starting their life together as husband and wife, and the sheer joy of the arrival of a healthy newborn addition to our family.

I am exhausted, and emotionally drained, and so grateful that my children are upstairs asleep in their beds. And heartbroken that my friend's family will never be whole again.

Checking In

Life is getting in the way of blogging, so I just wanted to check in and say hi. Holding steady at 205.4, not eating all that well. Gotta work on the refocus.

I'll get back to reading and commenting soon. In the meantime, take care.

Portion Control

The scale improved my mood a bit this morning - 204.8. I'll take it.

The pups continue to be cute and active and nippy, and my pounding headache is gone. The baby still has some kind of virus so she's not happy but the Hubs is home (with his own unspecified ailments) and helping.

Portion control continues to be the bane of my existence. I am forever serving myself wayyyy too much and then continuing to shovel it in even when I know I'm physically full. Why is that?

GRATUITOUS PUPPY PHOTOS

I hate to be a whiner, I really do. But today I'm doing it anyway. If you dislike whining, you might want to skip this one.

I. AM. SO. EXHAUSTED. Like, this exhausted:

I haven't showered in two or three days. I have a cold and my head is POUNDING and my throat is sore. The baby is coming off a stomach bug that included vomiting all over her car seat and down-the-leg, through-the-clothes diarrhea, Older son is coming off strep throat, Hubs was traveling all week and I have these two little puppies that I am socializing and training. Wednesday night I had five hours of sleep, and last night I went to bed at 11 pm - after running the puppies around through the day to tire them out - only to have the baby wake up screaming at 3.30 am for an hour and Younger Son come running into my room at 5.50 am covered in blood because he bonked his head and this crazy hemangioma thing he has burst and bled everywhere. He looked like Sissy Spacek in Carrie.

And have you ever tried to reassemble a Britax car seat after washing vomit out of the cover and various pieces of foam and straps? I feel like I should be awarded an engineering degree from MIT after that feat.

I don't even know what I've eaten, it's been leftovers mostly. I had a bunch of tikka masala sauce left, so I put it over cannelloni beans and quinoa - totally delicious, high-protein and good fiber. That almost negates the cream in the tikka masala sauce, right?

Yesterday the scale was down to 205.4 but this morning it's up to 206 again, so I'm holding steady. The puppies leave Sunday at 4 pm. They are so, so sweet but oh my god they are a lot of work. And I'm running out of newspaper... SEND HELP.

Woof!

In band news, I have nothing exciting to report here. No rockin' weight loss, no horrific vomiting episodes, no complaints about my doctor. My band is... fine. My hunger pops up here and there but generally it's manageable. Lately, I've been eating three meals and one or two snacks a day.

I have my Zone bar around 9 am (s-l-o-w-l-y, usually in the car as I drive to nursery school), and then lunch around 11.30. Lunch this week is a serving of chicken chili that I've made three meals out of. Then in the late afternoon I may have a piece of cheese and a few olives. Dinner is fish or chicken or cheese and an artichoke.

We have two pups visiting us this week from Guiding Eyes for the Blind. Kimball and Kylie are here till Sunday, which means we are BUSY feeding them, playing with them, taking them out and cleaning up after them.

The good news is, I'm so busy with them that I don't have much time to graze.

I'm holding steady at 206 right now, just hangin' out here waiting for the scale to do me some favors. I think it'll start moving because I've been eating pretty well lately, and the burst of energy required to keep up with the pups should help too.

Fall Has Arrived

We finally have a real fall day today! We took the kids and our nephew to the Bronx Zoo this morning, and it was cold enough that we had to wear jackets. Fall is my absolute favorite season, so I am completely excited about this. Plus, I walked around for two hours so I got some exercise.

The scale is inching downward again since my fill on Thursday, but I'll be interested to see whether it keeps moving. I'm not back down to my most recent low yet, so I'm not in new territory now.

My weight was holding steady at 5.5 cc's but the band was way too tight at 5.75. My surgeon tells me he doesn't like to go in increments smaller than 0.25 cc's for fills, which doesn't make much sense to me. The Hubs says if this fill doesn't quite get me over the hump I should just go in and ask him for 0.1 cc's and say I feel very strongly that he should at least try it. I think the Hubs is probably right. We'll see. I go back in a month.

I have to say, though, it is bliss to not be overly tight. We went to an Indian restaurant last night with some friends, and it was lovely to not worry about whether I'd spend half the night in the bathroom. I had one bite of each of the four appetizers we ordered and about 1/3 of my halibut. No naan for this girl, but it was a great dinner and I was able to relax and enjoy it. Plus, we found street parking in New York City on a Saturday night, which is like winning the lottery.

I'm Tweaking My Goal

When I saw my surgeon today, he asked if I had a specific goal weight in mind. I said I'd officially be out of the 'overweight' category at 145, according to the BMI chart. But I've never weighed 145 in my adult life, so I'm not all that confident I'll get there.

Dr. M said he thinks 160 is a good goal, I would be pretty healthy at that weight and if I keep losing beyond that point, great. But if I stayed between 160-165, he said that would be a really solid goal.

So I'm changing my ticker to reflect the new goal. Which is kind of exciting because now I have even less to lose before goal! I'll keep 145 as an aspirational goal, but I won't drive myself nuts trying to get there if I find I taper off at 160 or in the 150s.

Also, I did mention to my doctor that I had a terrible time getting in touch with him when I was overfilled earlier this month. I told him exactly how I had tried to get in touch, and he seemed surprised when I explained I called the office three times and his service once over the course of 24 hours. He said he must not have gotten the evening page, and he apologized for not having gotten back to me.

Oh, and the storm? The one that brought warning after warning and cancellation of all activities? Hasn't hit yet.