Life changes

Ok well I got a job. I work as a customer service rep  for a financial company. They trained me for 5 weeks, and now I know a lot about stocks and the stock market. My goal is to get my Masters in Accounting, so I think working in a financial field will be helpful in more ways than one.

I gave up dieting completely. I barely even log my calories anymore. At work I keep going to the vending machine for chocolate candy bars. I do bring protein bars to work as an alternative but they never look as good as the candy bars.

It looks like I haven’t mentioned this yet , but Dr. Nowzaradan said he wouldn’t be able to get my insurance to approve me for surgery. So I haven’t gone to him anymore.

I’m back to my original plan, which is to save money to get bariatric surgery in Mexico.

It’s going to be awhile though because first I need to get a car , so I can get back and forth to work (and school when I start). My schedule is so different from my moms. So we have my sister taking us to work and picking us up. My mom has to be to work at 8:30 am, I have to be to work at 10:30 am, there was no way for us to coordinate that unless I get up early take my mom to work, but then what happens when she gets off work and I’m still at work? so we needed my sister to help until I’ve saved enough to buy a car.

I currently don’t have medical insurance at all, I can get it through work after I’ve worked 90 days. Problem with that is I can’t afford my expensive medication right now and I depend on medication to get to sleep. Right now I have enough for another month, but after that I don’t know what to do. I have horrible insomnia without this medication. Like  not being able to sleep for days and feeling in pain. When I can’t sleep I can literally feel all my internal organs, it’s a weird and scary and painful feeling. I don’t know how I will be able to work if that happens. I can’t function when I haven’t slept. I hope I can wean myself off these meds, I’ve been trying but it’s not working. I have cut out 2 pills. But I still need 3. Nothing over the counter works.

Anyway, my life is good overall. I’m less stressed than I was last year at this time. Just ready to achieve my goals.

 

 

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Backsliding

This past week I have been eating way too many calories. I notice when I am out all day , eating out, I eat so many more calories than when I just stay home all day. When I stay home I eat less than 1600 calories a day, when I am out all day I eat more than 2000. One day last week I ate over 3000 calories. It was a day when I had multiple job interviews and I had therapy in the evening, I ate whattaburger for breakfast, Blue Baker for lunch and I think thai food for dinner with a boba tea. So many of my calories were liquid, cause I had a shake, a caramel ice coffee and that boba. I only followed the diet calorie restrictions 3 days last week.

Yesterday we were at a hotel and then we went to a symposium, I ate an over abundance of junk for breakfast yesterday, At the hotel I had eggs and 3 danish and orange juice for breakfast, then at the symposium I had a cinnamon roll, tuna sandwich and ginger ale. For dinner I had some indian food and lemonade.

Today I ate at IHOP with my mom for the Eid, end of Ramadan. My mom is Muslim and fasted all of Ramadan and she wanted to go out to celebrate the end of it. I had pancakes, eggs, turkey bacon, hash browns and orange juice. So yea. I don’t want to step on the scale cause I am pretty sure I gained weight.

That’s the thing about me, I can follow a diet for about 4 months, then I go back to eating crap. I can’t stick to it longer. This is what I’m working on in therapy.

Vacation in New Orleans

I was doing so good on my diet, I had got down to 297 pounds. I knew I was going on a week long vacation in New Orleans (to see my sister graduate from college and my niece graduate from high school) and I made a plan with my therapist on what I should do to stay on track with my diet while on vacation. Part of the plan was to buy groceries and plan my meals. We stayed in a nice Air BnB in the Bywater area of New Orleans. It had a kitchen. Should be able to stick to the plan.

Well that didn’t happen.

Every day I ate bigger breakfasts than my normal of some type. The first day we went to St. Roche Market and I ate lox & avocado schmear sandwich, barq’s root beer and 1/4 of red velvet cupcake. The second day my sister came over and made: eggs, pancakes, grits, fruit salad and biscuits. I ate it all except the biscuits. The third day my mom brought me back a egg and avocado croissant sandwich . Everyday there was some high calorie breakfast.

My sister weighs 135 pounds and she ate more than me the whole time we were there. It’s not fair. But… she’s a vegetarian and she exercises. She runs and does yoga. I was inspired to burn calories so I walked long distances several days on vacation.

One day I walked over 5 miles. We moved Air BnB locations to this high rise condo near the French Quarter. It was so nice, all white and modern inside. It was one block from Canal Street. So I got up at some point during the day and walked to canal street and then walked to st charles made a right and walked more then I tried to find my mom who was at a cafe so I walked over 2 miles to where she was on Poydras, then she and I walked to this other cafe that is past Lee Circle on St. Charles. It’s called Krewe Du Brew, it’s owned by this really hospitable black man. It’s great, it has $5 breakfast sandwiches all day, all kinds of coffee drinks and pastries, plus free wi-fi and we would sit there all day. We had wi-fi in our Air BnB but we didn’t want to sit in the house all day so we sat at that cafe by the window and watched pedestrians while my mom and my sister worked on their laptops. The MyFitnessPal app showed how many steps I walked that day, it was 12,000 steps and 5 miles. I thought I would have burned more calories but nope, just 400.

My sister wanted to stay near Lee Circle cause they were removing the monuments and she wanted to get pictures and video of it and the people around. It was crazy, people were holding up confederate flags and yelling that the next thing to come down would be the statue of Liberty. The history of those monuments and what they mean as far as intimidating black people is awful. I listened to the Mayor of New Orleans speech about why the monuments needed to come down and it was very moving and powerful.

Also we went out for dinners with the whole family on two of the days. Several of my sisters and step sisters live in New Orleans. So we had huge dinners at restaurants while there. Also we went to this restaurant called Cajun’s 3 days for dinner. I ate a shrimp PoBoy twice, cause that’s what New Orleans is know for. I also ate a catfish and grits platter. Also some Ooey Gooey cake. So delicious.

My calories averaged 2400 each day even though it didn’t feel like I was stuffing myself, the things I was eating were high calorie. I didn’t drink too much alcohol, not like I normally do in New Orleans. I had one drink both times we went out for the big family dinners. And I had one drink when I was walking down Bourbon street. Not too bad… for me.

Anyway I had a good time and I was carefree about what I ate and drank but the bad news is I gained back 7 pounds. I weigh 304.4. Gained that back in 9 days. It takes me 3 weeks to lose it. I’ve been sticking to my calories since being back.

Endoscopy

This has been a hellish two days. Starvation is no joke man.

So yesterday Mom and I drove to Houston to stay overnight in a hotel because my appointment at the hospital was for 7am and my mom didn’t want to wake up that early to drive there. We would have had to leave at 5am an wake up at around 4:30 am to drive to Houston. So we stayed there overnight but on the way to Houston the nurse called me and changed my call time to 9am. Which irritated me because we wouldn’t have got the hotel if we knew that.

Yesterday they said I could only have clear liquids and they gave me a list of items to choose from.
The only thing I had to eat yesterday was a bowl of chicken broth that had 10 calories in it, and 4 cups of jell-o which had 25 calories per cup. I drank diet iced tea that had 0 calories in it and apple juice. The apple juice had the most calories, it had 110 calories per 8 ounces. I had less than 500 calories the whole day and I was miserable.

Then TODAY, I was told not to eat or drink ANYTHING not even water. So I woke up at 8am and we got to the hospital at 8:45am today. Well they had us get there that early only to keep me and my mom waiting for 6 HOURS. I was so pissed. But I am shy and super passive so I didn’t say shit, but I was pissed. Mostly cause I was hungry but also I just think its disrespectful to give someone a 9am appointment time and then not see them till 3pm knowing they haven’t eaten or drank anything. Finally at 3pm they wheeled me into the Endoscopy procedure room. They gave me general anesthesia and I was out within seconds. They stuck a camera down my throat.The entire procedure lasted less than 20 minutes. They gave me pictures of the inside of my stomach, apparently it’s inflamed. I thought I may have had an ulcer but the inflammation explains the irregular pain I’ve felt in my tummy. It also explains the diarrhea I’ve had the last couple of days.

The whole time we were waiting me and my mom were looking up restaraunts to eat cause I was craving lobster mac n cheese. I was gonna reward myself for my starvation. We found some at a reasonable price online at the House of Blues. OK so after we left I was like let’s go straight to the Hard Rock Cafe. So we gps the directions to Hard Rock Cafe. Had a hell of a time finding parking. And walked to the Hard Rock. We were seated and looking at the menu but there was NO lobster mac n cheese. I was so confused but I was hungry so I just ordered a cheeseburger and parmesan fries with aioli sauce and  Iced Caramel drink. After our food was delivered I was thinking about it and I said “OMG we were supposed to go to The House of Blues NOT the Hard Rock Cafe.” I made a mistake. They both start with an H and they both are music related so I got confused. So mad I missed the lobster mac n cheese. To make up for it I ordered a hot fudge brownie sundae. It was HUGE. Me and mom shared it. But we didn’t even eat half of it. In total the calories for my meal came to 2400 calories. So I totally made up for 2 days of starvation. I hope I don’t gain a pound from this meal, I will be strict on my diet the rest of the week.

We are finally back home and I am not eating anything else today even though that meal was at like 4pm and I don’t go to sleep till 3am

Sticking to the plan

I’ve been sticking to my diet plan for the past week and I weighed myself today and I lost 3 pounds. I still haven’t caught up to my goal weight on my weight loss chart but atleast it’s moving in the right direction. I thought about what I had been eating that made me plateau and I realized that I was eating crap. I ate a giant stack of pancakes one day and on another day I ate mcdonalds chicken sandwich meal with fries and also Chik Fil-A that same day. So I was not eating strictly enough. I really fought my urge to eat a donut today. I drove past the donut shop and sat in my car for a full minute talking myself out of going in the donut shop. I didn’t go and I’m glad that I didn’t.

Today I ate:

Breakfast: Chobani flip pure pear & honey yogurt (140 calories)

Lunch: Organic Nutty Cranberry Salad with Lite Asian Sesame w/ginger soy Dressing (340 calories)

Dinner: quinoa with spaghetti meat sauce on it, I added a lil cheddar cheese and mango pickle to that with 15 calorie MinuteMaid lemonade (712 calories)

Snacks: I had snacks early this morning before breakfast. I had Red bean mochi ice cream and 2 starburst and 2 now & later candies (267 calories)

Today would have been perfect if I didn’t eat those snacks. My calories for the day came out to 1,459

My therapist wants me to think of rewards I can give myself for sticking to my diet. I’ve decided that if I stick to my plan for a week, I will get a margarita on Tuesdays, if I stick to my diet for 2 weeks, I will get a pedicure and if I stick to my diet for a month, I will buy myself something cute from either Lane Bryant, Torrid, Bath & Bodyworks or Ulta.

No weight loss

I don’t know if I hit a plateau or not but I am not losing weight. I have been at 306 for 3 weeks. I know I have been eating things that are not on my diet but for the past 4 days I’ve been good. I just feel like I haven’t been bad enough to halt my progress. I hate having to be ultra strict because I want a little fun in my diet. This is really disheartening. I feel like just the fact that I stopped drinking coca cola should make me drop a lot more weight than I’m losing. I don’t know what to do cause I really want to lose weight. Like what’s the point of not eating cookies and soda if I’m not gonna lose weight. I do update the weight loss chart on here every saturday, if you want to keep up with my efforts.

2nd Appt. with Dr. Now

So yesterday I got up at 1:15 pm and left the house by 1:30 pm and drove to Houston by myself. I do not like driving far distances alone. It took me 3 hours to get there because I was stuck in traffic for about 40 minutes and I ended up being 20 minutes late to my appointment with Dr. Nowzaradan. Turns out it didn’t matter cause they were filming the tv show and I would have had to wait anyway. Also another lady who had already had her episode air was there. I waited about 35 minutes before they called me in.

I got on their scale, it said 304.7 .  Weird. I weighed myself at home and it said 306.6

Dr. Now came in to see me, he said I lost 10 pounds since the last time I saw him, which is good. He looked at my blood work and he said it looks good. He said it looks like even though I am overweight, I don’t have any health issues caused by obesity. I don’t have high blood pressure, i don’t have high cholesterol, I don’t have diabetes. That can be a problem when it comes to my insurance approving me because they are usually looking for co morbidities. He said the next steps is to get my sleep study, psych eval, endoscopy, upper GI. He seemed surprised when I told him I already scheduled my sleep study for that night. I am very proactive and eager to get this bariatric surgery so I am on top of everything I need to do.

After the appointment, I had to rush back to College Station because I had a sleep study scheduled for 7:30 pm. I arrived at 8:00 pm. My sleep study specialist, Teresa, showed me to my room for the night. After filling out a ton of paperwork and getting into my nightie, she hooked me up to all the electronic contraptions. I took a picture

I had to sleep with all that stuff on. I got to bed around 10:00 pm and I don’t think I fell asleep until 12 am. I played ‘NSYNC – No Strings Attached album on my phone to try to soothe myself. I didn’t realize that album had so many upbeat songs. I think there was only 2 slow songs on that whole album. I felt like dancing in bed. Then my poppa bear (my boyfriend) called me and he had me laughing so yea I wasn’t really in the mood to sleep. Suddenly Teresa called my name and said it was time to wake up. I was surprised that I had fallen asleep. She woke me up at 5am. She said I was talking in my sleep telling someone to shut up.

So what I ate today:

5am I ate a bran muffin

4:30 pm I ate a chobani flip yogurt

6pm I ate a burrito from chipotle and had a nantucket nectar fruit drink with it, this meal had over 1500 calories in it which means I already went over my calorie goal for the day