...Who You Calling Petite??

Hello Everyone, welcome back to the blog.

First let me apologize for having made you all wait so long without keeping in touch. 
 Things get so hectic sometimes that it is tough to keep up.  Things are going great here with my weight i've almost reached the tipping point where I have actually lost  more  than I have left to lose. 
I have discovered several things as well. The first being how to guarantee that I cause a stall in my weight loss. Now just in case you wanted to know, A stall is when your weight fails to change or changes so slowly it becomes hardly noticeable. 
   Well stalls are common when you lose a lot of weight and there are several infamous ones. The most infamous is the dreaded three week stall, which as you guessed occurs around three works from surgery. Thankfully mine only lasted a few days, but some people will incur a much longer stall lasting even a few weeks. Now there is a scientific explanation for a stal, having to do with water and a sugar by-product called glucagon, basically it has to do with water moving in and filling in empty spaces left by the fat that has been burned by the body. You have to work through the stalls moving that water out of those spaces and then you lose weight. Now one thing  I have mentioned before is that I measured myself prior to surgery, and then again on my 6 week appointment. Well  i will be measuring myself soon so that I can see the results, although i can tell you this. 
  With my body undergoing so many changes I have now gone from a size 5xl shirt to wearing some nice new 2x shirts, and my pants went from a size 4xl to an xl,  the changes have been dramatic. My boss even made the remark to me that i was a very petite man. lol That is the first time in my life I have been called petite, and boy did I love it.  
   Soon soon I will post new measurements, I'm intrigued to find out for myself what the numbers are as well. So I know you are wondering well where are you now with your weight? Well let me say this as a reminder, In mid october of last year my surgeon told me it was time to start my weight loss, and at my official weigh in I weighed 362 pounds. 
   This morning I weighed in at 270 pounds , 92 pounds down. Now with my target weight being 170, i have currently lost 92 pounds with 100 pounds left to go and as I said earlier in 4 pounds I will have lost 96 pounds with 96 left to go. Thats my tipping point, and I will enjoy it as well. 
  Now with all the snow and problems around i missed the gym for over a week, but we restarted a few days back and things are right back on track. One amazing thing is just one month before my surgery I was given a cardiac stress test and after 8 minutes of exercise my heart rate was over 160+ beats per minute. 
   Yesterday just for example, I rode for about 5 miles on the bike and  my heart rate never got above 131 bpm. Thats a tremendously lower load on my heart than just a few months ago. That's the best reinforcement of why to have this surgery I could get.  
   I  know that in the past I have told you all how little i eat well I want to share a picture of an actual meal, now this is a picture of a typical dinner for me. It consists of three small pieces of chicken  ( breaded yes but i have to have a few carbs everyday and these are it), and to make it even funnier i was only able to eat one of them. The little cup is a new product by libby's. They are little individual cups of veggies you can microwave, its a nice fit for me. 
So here'

is what i have for dinner, again keep in mind i could only eat one of the chicken pieces.  To give you a little perspective each piece of chicken is the size of one of those little lollipops, as a matter of fact these are called chicken pops, or about the size of a quarter each. 
   This is one of those really small plates, because yes, putting your food on a small plate does indeed help your mind get past the psychological hunger. Now one of the things I want to discuss, is this. You may or may not have heard or watched a TV program called the The Biggest Loser. Well in this weight loss show the contestants , all obese people, compete to lose the most weight. Now they get literally 24 hour a day care, trainers on call at all times, medical staff, nutritionists, chefs and exercise physiologists all ready to make sure they get all the help possible. Plus they workout all day long, no employment or life responsibilities. Then over the course of 16 weeks they find out who lost the most. Well on this seasons finale thier head doctor, knowns as Dr H, ( doctor Wayne Huizenga.) said that the contestants lost weight the "right way" without that distasteful and bad weight loss surgery.
  The man totally insulted people who have weight loss surgery, dealing a blow to people out there who would think about surgery but are now told not to. Well of course it is all money motivated as this doctor runs the Biggest Loser weight loss camp, where people pay 3 thousand dollars per week to lose weight. It infuriated me, and many others. Unfortunately he never said that like 60% of The Biggest loser contestants gain back all their weight because they aren't taught to change their lifestyle. I use this surgery as a tool to teach me how to eat forever, losing the weight is one part but keeping it off is the most important. over 80% of gastric sleeve patients keep  a large portion of their initial lost weight off for more than ten years. 
  Well thank you for coming back again, and there will be another blog post very soon, a special Milestone post at that. 

See you all soon, and here is this entry's cartoon: