Another day, another consultation

Actually, I am too wiped out from consultations Monday and Wednesday and life in between to write about them right now.   I will have pricing numbers from today up later.   Not later today.   Later this millenium.

So this is really a weigh-in in disguise.   Here are the shots from the day the scale went below 150.   The way I’ve been eating today, I’m not sure it will stay there.   I don’t know why I’m so hungry except bad meal management so that I was starving from 1-4:30, and three half hour walks, maybe combine to leave me needing more food.  But now I’ve had enough and I keep wanting to eat.   That’s something else.   I finally got my hand to stop taking pretzels out of the pretzel bag.   I think I’m done for the night.   But I’m craving something sweet even though I already had a square of chocolate and one mini-cookie bite which is much more processed sweets than I normally eat.   Probably this is yet another facet of PMS.  

Tomorrow is May, start of a new month.  Communist holiday.   Pagan spring holiday.   Good stuff.   Maybe I’ll feel better.   I have one more consultation next week and then I’m not even thinking about scheduling any more for at least a week.   I don’t know that I need to talk to anyone else.   I guess LoMonaco in Texas is the only obvious person left to talk to.  And I just don’t see how I can have surgery out of town really.  

I really do feel sick – and too tired to exercise more.   I walked the dogs to the park, walked around Beverly Hills from Roxbury to Wilshire to Rodeo to Santa Monica and back to Roxbury.  And then to the market and back for dinner.   I guess that is 1.5 hours of walking and hopefully balances out that bag of pretzels.  Oy.

Here is NS’s word on the subject:

 

Note – 31% body fat. It is falling, but it’s not exactly 27. Wish I knew what was reasonable. I suspect, as ridiculous as it seems, that the body fat measurement heuristic isn’t designed for fat people. We aren’t as straight up and down in a line as thin people are. It could be missing my butt entirely…  (By the way, the plastic surgeon today said my butt was small.  I mention that because it is the first time in recorded history anyone has ever said that.   I have no idea what he means.   My butt is huge.)

Here is GS:

I’m still sorry I missed getting a picture of 150.0, just for posterity. NS keeps the display on a while as it cycles between weight, body fat and water percentages. GS on the other hand flashes the weight for a second or two and then decides to move on with its life. I have to get the weight, turn around while still on the scale, get my camera, get it focused, take the picture – all before it blanks out. I miss a lot.

So, a few moments later, GS thought maybe this was what it meant:

I felt like if I just stood there, maybe I’d hit 130 that day…

Note the big thighs in the foreground. Lovely.

I should be happy.   I was happy for one moment when I hit 150.  I was happy on Monday up until I tried to drive home in rush hour.   But things have been downhill since then.   And now, the shooting stomach pains are starting.   Great.

 

sigh

That isn’t how you spell “fluxuation” is it?

 

pass the smiley faces

I have pictures but for now:

This morning both scales were below 150.

Yes, this seems unlikely given the fluxuation, but actually I have a regular monthly pattern, related to that other regular monthly thing no doubt, of holding at a certain weight longer that it seems like I should and then dropping a pound or two suddenly, faster than it seems like I should.   I guess it’s water retention.

The weights were in the 149s, so I have (a) met my target for the month; (b) achieved my next big milestone of reaching 150; (c) started the last leg of the journey with less than 50 pounds to lose for the first time in, well, years and (d) the only milestone left is “stable goal weight and normal bmi”.   Wow.

 The fat% was 30, which is definitely down although less down than last night.  I weighed myself after a walk so maybe the water was circulating.   Water was up near 50%.  

Seriously, if this doesn’t call for a smiley, what does???    :-)    :-)     :-)

 

weigh-in 4-28-08

I had a hard day with a lot of missed meals and I was starving all the way home from LA in rush hour traffic, also had nothing to drink, so when I got home I thought “hey, maybe I should weigh myself now”. So healthy.

Here’s what I got. First time on New Scale:

Do you think my feet are getting thinner?

Notice the fat percentage – 27%! It was 31 this morning. These numbers are totally unreliable. I did read the instructions and it recommended weighing yourself in the evening when the water has time to circulate in your body or something.

Good Scale hit 150.0 for one bright, shining moment. But when I tried to photograph it, it came out like this (picture is small so you can’t see how dirty my toenails are.)

Then I got on the other scale again:

Water percentage was 51% – it’s never been more than around 37 in the morning. And I felt dehydrated.

Downward trend, people. That’s about all I can say for sure.

I’m not counting this as the official 150 milestone. I want to see it in the morning, and I like to see it a couple days in a row to be sure.

Consult #5

Bottom line:  I really liked this doctor and I am leaning heavily towards choosing him.  

The main way he differs from the last 4 is that he specializes in post-bariatric plastic surgery and 99% of his practice is that.   It is conventional wisdom, backed up by studies, that when it comes to surgery your best odds are to choose someone who does the surgery you need the most often. 

I didn’t say that very well.   But there is a world of difference between having done a few surgeries of this type, doing a few surgeries of this type a month and doing surgeries of this type almost every day.  Two worlds of difference.

Plus this guy is a total nut.   I don’t think he ever sleeps.   I asked his staff and they don’t think he ever sleeps.  He sees patients and in between runs around showing photos on the computer, creating and organizing sets of photos, doing all kinds of other things.   I wouldn’t want to have been in school with him, I wouldn’t want to be married to him, but in a doctor – yeah, I want an insane workaholic perfectionist.   As long as he’s not keeping himself awake with amphetamines or coke.

His fees will be added to the pricing info soon.  Along with a more detailed analysis of what I liked about him and his office. 

 

perspective

I was just looking at my bank account – the consult fees for my last two consults just posted, one for $250 and today’s for $150.    So I was thinking – should I be spending all this money?  am I doing the right thing? is this all justified?

And then I looked at the next entry which was a $500 charge to the vet for the dog’s stuff.   And that’s just one of the dogs, the other one was neutered earlier this month for at least that much.

So yeah – I think I can justify spending $400 on my own health and future.

Thanks dogs! 

Consultation #5

Tomorrow I’m going to have a consultation with a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon (that narrows it down, right?)

This one costs $150.

I have high hopes for this doctor so I hope I’m not too disappointed.  I’m still looking for the person who I feel really confident about – about their skills and about their understanding and committment to doing what I want, or trying to do it. 

This is a doctor who does a lot of post-bariatric work.  I’m hoping he’s seen someone almost as bad as me.

What a hard decision this is – you’re choosing who to put your life in the hands of, and your future happiness with your body and yourself, and your money, because if they do a bad job and it doesn’t kill you, you’ll probably have to have it redone somewhere else. 

I don’t mind the consultation fees too much.   It feels like you ought to have to spend some money and effort on deciding who to trust that much.

 

Hopes of a future thin person

Today I had a good exercising morning.   I did the stretching portion of the balance ball dvd and then did a Weights for Dummies dvd.   I think they are both good for relative beginners who are fairly far along in their weight loss and simple exercise and are ready to try to increase or at least vary their workout.

I am much more fit than I was a year ago.   I feel like I’m fit – I go up stairs without breathing hard, I can go faster and longer on the treadmills and ellipticals etc., I can actually do the ab crunches and other things on these tapes.

But on Friday, I tried to run at the gym.   I did 20 minutes at the fastest pace I’ve gone yet on the split treadmill, which is my favorite workout machine.   Then I did about a 5 minute walking warm up on a regular treadmill, increasing speed to the high threes – about 3.7 or 3.8 before the speed was too high for me to walk.   Then I started to run, increasing the speed to 4 and then the low 4s – 4.1, 4.2 – as I tried to find a comfortable speed.    My goal was to run for 5 minutes and then slow down and walk for the last 5 minutes.

I only made it for about 3 – 3.5 minutes before I really had to stop running. 

On the bright side, that is the first 3 minutes of running I’ve done in over 10 years and I physically could not have run more than a few steps last year.

On the, well, cloudy but with a chance to become patchy sunlight side, the last time I lost weight, I could actually run for half an hour or more, I could go outside and go jogging, I jogged in San Francisco down to the Embarcadero and back to wherever I started from.  Yeah, that would be more impressive if I could remember where I started from, but still – jogging.  In San Francisco.  Me.    That was absolutely the high watermark of my weightloss and fitness.   I weighed 125 by the end of that trip. 

So, that tells me that I am right that I am not done yet.   Many plastic surgeons, n fact all of them, have suggested that I don’t need to lose more weight – that it’s not worth it.   I think that shows an underlying bias – that they don’t see me as having the potential to actually be a fit person of a healthy or thin weight.  They don’t see me as someone for whom attractiveness and normalcy is a realistic goal.  They don’t see me as worth it.   For now, I’m not ready to write myself off like that.   I have worked too hard.   I can lose another 25 pounds of fat, become stronger and fitter and then, when I have all the extra skin removed, I will be the person my body was meant to be.

The alternative, if I stop now, is that I will be 20-30 pounds overweight at the end.   That’s the kind of weight where your doctor tells you to lose weight every time you go.   It’s right on the borderline of obesity.   Why would I want to stop there???

 

Questions to ask at the consultation

Here is a link to a good article with suggestions about what to ask at a ps consultation: http://www.obesityhelp.com/forums/plasticsurgery/cmsID,10832/mode,content/a,cms/

I have my own 4 page list.   One of my goals is to condense that and other sources of suggestions into one master list.   No, I have no social life.

The most useless suggestion which I see everywhere is to ask whether the doctor is board certified by the ASPS.   You can find out yourself by searching the directory on the ASPS site (link is in the Useful Links list) and if the doctor isn’t board certified, just cancel your consultation. 

I think the most difficult questions to ask are “how much experience do you have”, “how many of these have you done”, “how often do you do these”.  It’s just awkward, feels like an interrogation.  I haven’t managed to ask it yet.  If I find a doctor that I feel enough rapport with to ask it, maybe I’ll have found the right doctor for me.

My favorite question right now is the one I ask last: “What else should I be asking you?”

 

 

 

The secrets of my success

These are the crucial elements of my weight-loss plan:

Low calorie diet

Exercise

Trader Joes salads

my iPod

This American Life

 

… that’s really all there is to it.