5 Out of 33: Maintenance

I've mentioned in previous posts about my struggles with weight loss.  This past nine months I've had some interesting ups and downs related to that.  Every weight loss surgery has risks and side effects as a result.  I had lap band which is the least invasive.  It has the least amount of complications and fatalities, but the main reason I chose this surgery was because it is adjustable and you have to be accountable.  Lap Band patients traditionally loose less than patients who've have gastric bypass and other surgeries, but that was something I was prepared for.  I had three weights in my head when I went into surgery:

1. 170: This was my initial goal.  For my height according to BMI charts (which I don't love, but that's besides the point) that would still make me "overweight" but knowing that patients who undergo lap band surgery loose less than others I wanted to give myself a realistic expectation.  I hit this weight about 2 years ago and it felt good.  I plateaued for a bit and assumed that was where I would stop.

2. 150: This was the goal my surgeon was hoping I would reach.  This put me in the "healthy" BMI range for my height.  About a year or so ago I ramped up my cardio a little bit and hit this goal.  It felt fantastic.

3. 130: This was a vanity thing in my head that I never thought I would reach.  I hit this weight about six months ago.  I loved how it looked and I loved the size I was slipping into, but I didn't feel great.

I had developed acid reflux which is a common side effect of lap band and I lost most of those last 20 pounds due to eating little and regurgitating when I ate too much.  Even though this was still a "healthy" weight people were commenting that I looked too thin.  I had some liquid removed to have a looser band and put some weight back on.  The thought of gaining a little weight was scary because there is a part of me that is terrified I'll be obese again, but people commented that I actually looked better.  My weight constantly has been between 135-140 the past few months and it feels healthy.  I occasionally still get episodes of acid reflux but I've learned those are stress induced so I'm trying to minimize stress.

Now I'm in maintenance which is a new place for me.  I'm not training to loose weight, I'm just trying to stay at my current weight range.  Enter in the Fitbit my cousin got me.  I'm not so concerned with tracking calories, but more tracking things like my water intake, sleep, and activity.  I want to see what I need to do to maintain my current size.  If I gain weight at some point I'll have to start tracking food and logging calories again, but for now that isn't a concern.  This is an interesting new chapter.  I've never been in this place before.

Photo by Gadgetmac 

15 out of 32: Eating Cleaner

I have been on more diets than I can remember at this point.  Weight wise I'm at a pretty healthy place, I'm five pounds lighter than my goal weight (which is okay since it is still a healthy BMI for me).  I'm focused more on toning than weight loss at this point.  

I have been working on altering my diet though.  Mostly because I have acid reflux.  It has progressively been getting worse, I am seeing a doctor (which I strongly recommend to anyone with any type of digestive issue), but I have noticed that I feel better when I eat certain foods and worse when I eat others.

The foods that I notice I don't typically feel great after eating are: meat, heavy dairy (full fat cheese, sour cream, etc), and white flour (breads, pasta).  So I've been making a conscious effort to cut these foods down to a minimum and focus on eating things that agree more with my stomach like beans, veggies, soy, and fish.

I started off slow by incorporating a meatless monday into my routine.  Now that has expanded to not keeping any of these foods that make me feel lousy and I'm trying to keep eating them period to a minimum.  It's a small start, but when I follow this plan I feel better.

Photo by Danny Boyster 

Owning It

So the first thing I did on my 32 Before 32 list was to start this blog.  If you know me this might not seem like something new or a stretch for me.  I've been freelancing writing for about five years now.  I've also had different blogs in the past.  I had a blog when I first moved to NYC that was more for sharing fun experiences I was having exploring my new home with friends and family.  I also had a blog that I used a pseudonym for about my weight loss experience at the time and I had a very underground blog that was more of a catalogue of bad dates that I went on.  After a couple of years or several months I'd get bored with these projects and abandon them.  None of them felt like me or what I wanted to get out of a blog.

So I wanted to challenge myself to start a blog without really having a theme or specific purpose in mind.  The only rules I gave myself was that it had to be in my voice, had to be completely honest, and I needed to be open to where this may take me.

During the past couple of weeks I've been visiting my little sister.  She still lives in the house we grew up in and during this visit we've been going through a lot of photographs and unearthing items we haven't seen in years.  This simple task has been very bittersweet.  As we go through photos I've been making copies for an album for me to keep in my apartment in New York.  I noticed at first that while I was grabbing photos of family members, high school and college friends, etc I was picking very few photos that included me. The reason is simple I was an overweight kid and it wasn't until I moved to New York and really found a nutrition and fitness lifestyle that worked for me that I slimmed down to a weight that is health and easy for me to maintain.

I'm really happy with how healthy I look and feel, but there are still image issues that I struggle with.  I can fixate on things that I perceive to be flaws like not having a flat stomach, flabby upper arms, hair that I never does what I or hair products want it to do, etc.  When people complement me on my looks there is a part of me that doesn't believe them and thinks that I they are just being polite or at really low times I think they are really making fun of me.  When I go on dates there is a part of me that thinks I can't get too intimate because if I show a guy old photos of me he will dump me.

These inner demons of low self esteem and self doubt are something that I don't want to hold me back anymore.  I could take some lessons from that chubby girl I used to be.  She was ballsy, marched to her own drummer, and was fearless about just being herself.  Fortunately she is me so I just learn how have the same confidence with a different exterior.  I really do believe it is the inside of a person that counts so I need to apply the way I feel about other people to myself.