Who's the Guy on The Fifty? Me?

  So hello again everyone, Welcome back. I wanted to start today's blog post off with some good news. two days ago was the 50th day since my surgery.  Coincidentally it was also the day I weighed in at 282 pounds, or 50 pounds lost since surgery. That equates to 1 pound per day lost. This is just amazing tome that I have been able to do this. The Gym and the dieting have truly done wonders. 
So many health issues have been resolved or greatly lessened since the surgery, that I can truly say I am so much more healthy now than I have been in 15 years. Now since the pre-op dieting and surgery together I have now lost 80+ pounds. I can honestly look forward to being able to say I have made an effort and as a result have lost 100 pounds ( no jinx).  This is my next goal. 
   I talked with the owner of the company I work for and he is an avid runner who has run 45 marathons and multiple triathlons including the iron man earlier this year. Well he has posted face book entry where no matter the temperature and we all know how cold it has been here, he and his friends have been out every morning running. Well I asked him  about how much he loves running and he surprised me by saying he doesn't like it at all. What he likened it to was liking the feeling when you're done running. The endorphin high AKA "Runners High," is what he is talking about. One of my coworkers  once said i would get addicted to going to the gym. Now I haven't got to that point yet, but I hope to.
   I will say that after a workout I do feel better both physically and of course mentally about myself. This week weather permitting we are due to start Circuit Strength Training, which consists of an additional 30 minute workout where you alternate between 10 machines for 1 minute and 1 minute of cardiovascular work, like stepping and this lasts 30 minutes and you switch from station to station with a traffic type light that goes from red to green to keep you moving along. 

This is another motivating factor.

Now this exercise thing takes some getting used to of course, and it isn't easy but it is necessary. I had someone ask what my food day looks like so I will give you some idea of my basic day. 

Breakfast-One egg scrambled, sometimes with one or two slices of precooked bacon, that I warm up. an sometimes with some cheese on the egg. I can usually eat the whole thing now in about 20 to 25 minutes. Once a week I may have 1/4 cup of cheerios with just enough 1% milk to touch them all instead of the egg but then I have to do something to make up for the protein difference. 

Lunch- (Work Week) Protein Shake in 6 Ounces of liquid. (Weekend) Varies usually something very light. 

Dinner- Primarily chicken, but add in beef usually once a week, or pork once a week. I have about 3 to 4 ounces of chicken and two tablespoons of vegetable, and a tablespoon of starch (sometimes) 

Snack- If  get the urge or hunger for a snack I have these peeled apple slices, or a scoop of peanut butter.  Or sugar free Jello or sugar Free Pudding.  

That's it. that is the basis of my food life at this point. Not exactly a lot, as a matter of fact about 600 calories on average.  So you can see that if you, my glorious readers were to follow this food plan....you would probably be hungry ALL THE TIME. Ha ha. But it works, and that's the bottom line in this. Now you may ask, well don't you get hungry? Well yes and no, there is a Psychological hunger that can make it as hard to say no to bad things as any physical hunger you can have. Also when you are actually physically in need of food you do get a bit of hunger. 

  What is hard is the fact you really stay away from the dread carbohydrates. Now i know my nutritionist has said and others as well that there are good carbs and bad carbs. However if you can, you avoid both. I do allow myself the occasional pita. There's a company called Josephs, that makes a Whole wheat pita with flax seed and omega 3's, that is only 4 net carbs for a whole small pita. I will say this, i beg for something crunchy, oh how i miss that crunch. I did find some crackers at Trader Joe's that are made from quinoa, rice flour and whole bran that are a lot like a tortilla chip and i will have maybe 4 or 5 with some salsa when i can get some salsa or actually i'm probably going to make some homemade salsa once the weather clears a bit. So with another 7 inches today and 10 more due tomorrow, I will be surely working from home. 

I wil

l leave you with that my dear readers. Also I will be posting all my taste test videos to you tube tonight I will post a link in the next post. See you then. 

Until then Here is my ending cartoon!

I Just Cant Weight..or..The Doctor is out!

Hello again everyone.  We have hit 1.5 months since surgery and all things are going well. 
I wanted to ell you how things are really going day to day. Food wise, I was cleared to eat anything I can tolerate, which pretty much means anything in extremely small quantities. I had asked my nutritionist when I could try a salad. I ate so many of them in pre-op, and i really like salad.  Well Lettuce as with most leafy greens do not digest well if at all. The cellulose fibers in the plants do not digest and have a tendency to act like a high does of fiber, and can expand and make your sleeve feel overfull. It can lead to throwing up. or just plain feeling like you swallowed a brick.
  So I was told to try a very small amount at first ( like there is any other size I could eat?!?) well i tried some homemade chicken salad wrapped in a lettuce leaf. Well i tried it wrapped in some heirloom bibb lettuce i got from Trader Joe's. Unfortunately the lettuce tasted like grass to me. 
  That is one of the things that happens after this surgery. Certain items will taste bad and certain others that you disliked now have enhanced tastes. I almost feel pregnant n that i tried a pickle and was amazed at how god it was. Not some special handmade pickle , just a small piece of dill pickle.  So I figured i was out of luck. Needless to say i tried a little bit of salad at work and iceberg lettuce still lasted good. 
 So I know what your thinking, how about an update? Sure lets get into it. First I will give you an update on my weight. My surgery remember was on Dec. 16th. In the pre-op diet i lost 30 pounds going from 362 to 332 on the day of my surgery. Today I am down to 286. Which is 46 pounds in 45 days since surgery or 76 pounds total since October 12th. Just as important along with the weight loss is the physical changes my body has made in response to the weight loss. So on January 23rd we remeasured my body at specific points and compared them to the measurement we took at surgery, and here they are below in inches.

AREA                   12/16/2014                           1/23/2015

Neck                       23                                             20

Chest                      60                                             52

upper arms  R  20    (L)  20                                   R 17 (L) 17

forearms      R  15   (L) 15                                     R 12 (L) 12

belly                        60                                               54

waist                        56                                               50

Thigh               (R) 26 (L) 26                                      (R) 24 (L) 24

   If you add that all up I have lost over 30+ inches since surgery. That seems like an absurdity, even to me and I'm the one living it. It is also a relief and a huge motivator to keep going. I average between .6 to .8 pounds a day lost now. I do have small stalls, which are expected with tremendous body changes, you will hold some water in here and there, it happens. I went 4 days without losing an ounce then on the fifth day dropped 2 and a half pounds. That's usually how a stall in weight loss breaks. 
 Just to give you an idea what my daily intake is like I will give you a normal day. In the morning I get up for work at about 6:45 am. I do not have to be to work until 9:30 am, but my wife is up and usually leaves by 7:15 so i like to be up and ready to go to see her off. Also if i get out of bed my chances of oversleeping are nil. 
   At first I had to decide should I eat breakfast or should I have some coffee ( decaf of course, although caffeine has had no harmful acidic effects on me so far). I have this down to eat first , so I whip up one egg scrambled. I even bought a very small non stick frying pan to make it easier to cook. Some days i will have two pieces of precooked bacon. I heat it up first of course. I can usually finish this or at least 90% of it over a half hour while the news is on and i get ready to leave for work. On my way to work I stop at Dunkin Donuts.
    Now in the past this was a very bad thing for me. I wouldn't eat breakfast at home but would buy a bagel with cream cheese, and extra cream cheese ( yeah I liked my bagel loaded lol) and two donuts as well for later in the day, and a cup of coffee, extra cream, extra sugar.  Obviously this was a big part of keeping myself fat, but I love donuts. It was comfort to go, with a hole in the center. 
   I realized that I cannot just deprive myself of everything bad I did, I just have to adjust. So now i get a medium decaf and add a sugar substitute like monk fruit extract, ( tastes better then sweet and low, yecch)  or even just one sugar, which overall is not that bad if that is the only sugar you have, although unrefined sugar is better like in sugar in the raw etc. I usually can only drink about 1/4 of a medium, before it gets cold and cold coffee is not my thing in winter anyway. For lunch i have a protein shake, either a Fuzzy Navel flavor or Cappuccino. Then for dinner its usually something chicken related. A store near us sells really good marinated chicken, in both pieces and in breast forms. Like Asian Chili, or Parmesan garlic, or Bourbon Turkey Tips. These cook up quick served  with a very small side of vegetables and sometimes even a smaller amount of starch. A total of about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of total food. If i get the urge later I will have some sugar free jello or sugar free pudding.  We went out for breakfast this morning to the doughnut shop we always frequented, no I did not get a doughnut, I got one egg and some toast and I was able to eat about half the egg and about 3/4 of one half slice of whole wheat toast. It is rough but it is also very interesting to leave a lot of food on your plate especially since I grew up in a household where you ate everything on your plate as a rule. Well i think I will leave it there for now, The next post will be much  sooner I swear. So see you soon, and go Patriots!
 Here is my cartoon for this post, Enjoy:

...............300... This Is Not Sparta!

  Welcome back friends loved ones and wayward Were-bunnies. Thank you for coming back and reading my blog. You all provide a great service to someone like me. Some of you I probably don't know, yet your reading my words keeps me going as much as anyone around. 
I thank you. Now on to the fun. 
  It is now almost one month post surgery and things are progressing. Not quite as fast as they started off, but they are not really supposed to. As a refresher, here is some quick background. In December of 2012 i weighed in at 408 pounds. In a response to this I decided it was time for a change and started my journey in weight loss. I wasn't very good at it as over the course of the next 15 months i only managed to lose 34 pounds. 
   This helped me to understand that I needed a new plan. I started off in March of 2014 at 374 pounds and started my job at Peach New Media.They helped inspire me to take that next step as well. The step to Bariatric Surgery, VSG also known as Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy, aka the sleeve. My pre-op weight loss plan helped me lose 30 pounds from October 12th to December 16th. 
 On December 16th 2014 I underwent the VSG procedure at Saint Elizabeth's Hospital, my surgery weight was 332 pounds. . A day later I was home healing, and about a month later I sit here writing to you. 
  The best news i can give is I now weigh in at 298 pounds. For the first time in probably 15 years I have cracked the 300 barrier. Honestly I had dreamed of this day for a long time, but dreams alone done do the work, it took a lot to get just to this point and I am truly glad to be here. Here is some side by side pics of my face, see if you can tell the difference before the weight loss and currently. 

Before

Current














I hope you see a difference. So far I am down 2 shirt sizes from a 5xl to a 3xl and in pants, Well lets just say it is a big difference. I have been wearing mostly elastic pants knowing I would be losing weight i couldn't buy anything expensive or it would be a waste anyway. So Sweatpants and workout type pants for me. I dropped from a tight 3xl pant to a loose 2xl pant.  I will post my before surgery measurements and I will take another set of measurements after my formal weigh in and meeting with the nutritionist on the 21st. That will be a hoot. 
  So I am now on the soft foods stage but that includes soft meats so im very happy about that. Yet in a be careful what you wish for sort of way. You see after being on the liquids for two weeks you truly want to eat something. However when you get to do so you realize how little you can eat and all the restrictions come to bear. Eat to fast..you will pay for it, eat too much, you will pay for it. 
  For me the toughest is not drinking within a 1/2 hour before and after meals. Also just not being able to drink in the way you used to , and I don't mean alcohol.  Let's say you are thirsty,  want to just grab a glass of water and drink your fill. Well your fill is a small half mouthful. Then wait then maybe another small half mouthful. 
 Now add to this the fact that myself and my wife have joined a gym. We go 4 to 5 times a week, and I ride the stationary bike ( upright) and she uses the treadmill. We started the first time at 15 minutes, because i was close to surgery still and didn't know what this would do to me to be honest. 
  I know from a year or so ago in physical therapy when i had my shoulder surgery, that I was capable of doing 15 minutes on the bike, albeit with a supreme effort on my part.  Well that first day was okay. The next week we upped it to 20 minutes and i was able to ride 5 miles and even doing the hill program on the bike. 
  The best part is although I was tired and sure felt the burn, I wasn't feeling like I would die like i used to. Losing this much weight so far has truly already benefited me. So next week 25 minutes, and then 30. Then we add in the circuit training to be sure i can keep some muscle tone. All in all things have gone very well. I go together with friends on last Saturday for the New England Patriots game and my friends all remarked how much I had changed. It is truly a wonderful thing to hear when you know and can feel and see the changes. Sometimes people say " oh have you lost weight?" when in reality they are just being polite. This time, i know and can honestly answer yes, I have. Well thats where I am going to leave this and head off to bed. I hope you have a wonderful week, and I will see you soon. 

and I leave you with this.

..........All I want for Christmas, is food.

  Hello all, Yes it has been awhile but  this time immediately following surgery has been....busy and involved to say the least.  While on the pain meds you really should not write. ( The things i wrote ,  well wow, English becomes your third language right behind gibberish.) Immediately after you stop the pain meds you have so much to do just making your day go by, that you don't seem to have time to write. 
Before we get too far along I would like to post some videos! Yay here are some videos for your enjoyment. They are taste tests of two different product lines. First is from the about time shake and go series.

 
  The second is from Premier Protein, many people swear this is great, we shall see The premier people were kind enough to send me 4 4-packs of their assorted flavors of ready made products. Now we all remember how bad the ready made stuff was very early on in the blog, but with many people liking these we are giving it a shot. 

  Anyway, Let us focus on the good things, today is 12/30/2014 exactly 14 days since surgery. Two weeks, half a month!  lets look at the positives and do a grand recap of this weight issue as it relates to this surgery. In 2012 I weighed in at 408 pounds, this is while I was in school, unemployed and just focusing on schoolwork, doing a mix of daytime, morning and night classes made or helped me, eat very bad things and eat them sometimes at weird hours, not very conducive to living healthy at all.
    I started my  employment at Peach, where I have had so much support and  help, in February 2014, at that time I happened to go to my doctors and weighed in at 374 pounds.   I started my pre op diet on October 12, 2014 at 362 pounds, which felt good to be down from the 408 two years previous. My surgery date was 12/16/2014 and at that time I weighed 332 pounds. Now back to today. Two weeks post surgery I weighed in this morning at 307 pounds. 25 pounds down in 14 days. Now obviously this is not going to last, this rate of weight loss that is. You cant lose over a pound a day for a sustained period of time without  turning into a malnourished waif.  
    For the first week or so, two pounds a day was the norm, the last few days have slowed to a pound a day and soon , from conversations with others etc, my weight loss will slow to a few pounds a week and stay at that rate off and on. Now this is all well and good, and the next step is going to be more physical. Tomorrow I get cleared , hopefully, by the Nurse practitioner to move from liquids and purees ( which is still liquid only disgusting), to what is known as stage 4 . The stage 4 diet includes soft meats ( like pulled pork, fish, ground beef, shredded chicken etc.) mashed vegetables, ( I pity the fool that keeps me from some mashed potatoes, just once lol) eggs, ( yes scrambled eggs is a joy I will experience.) etc. 
  Now if it seems I am overjoyed at the prospect of eating something with some solidity to it, well yes it is true. After 2 weeks of nothing but liquids, you would go nuts. You cant eat nuts however. 
  There are three things that have kept me sane, my wife taking time off to be home with me has been just a godsend. To be alone and going through this all day would have been just unbearable. The second thing is the weight loss. To get up every day and see the scale drop almost two pounds, is beyond the normal happy feeling, you get from almost anything else, at least for me in this context. 
   It really makes you happy to see this weight literally falling off of you thanks to the surgery and the fact you are taking in about 400 calories per day or 5 times less than a normal weight person is recommended to take in daily. 
   Third on the list is a weird one. Sugar free Jello, and sugar free Cool whip. Yes not Lite Cool Whip, but sugar free. If you look in your grocers freezer its there, it is not the easiest to find, but it is there. The Sugar free Jello, gives you the illusion on solidity , at least for a short time, and it gives you some "mouth feel."  While the Sugar Free Cool Whip actually lets you feel like you are having something decadent. It is a funny product because it has almost zero taste to it. But it has the creaminess that Cool Whip is known for. Tie these three things together and you can make it through the rough period of two weeks of nothing but liquids, well yes Jello counts as a liquid. 
   Thankfully I have only had a few, hiccups along the way in these two weeks. One thing you figure out is that if you drink too fast or too much you will hear about it. I seriously mean that, you will be visited by three ghosts ( sorry Mr. Dickens), The first is the Ghost of the weird noises. Your stomach will make noises they can hear on a listening post in Bora-Bora. It's like whales moved in to your colon and decided to sing the entire works of Beethoven at a high volume. 
   This is a warning song, should you  not listen to it the second ghost will come, the Ghost of Intense Gastric Pains. You will feel like your stomach is eating itself, well what little of it is left that is. It is very painful, it feels like intense hunger only multiplied by a scale of 20. It is not fun. If you have reached this point then ghost number three always follows Ghost number 2. Ghost number 3 is the Ghost of the toilet screaming. WARNING the following paragraph is graphic in nature and may upset the sensibilities of those with a weak constitution.  
   The Ghost of toilet screaming is of course a Euphemism for evacuating all the liquid in your stomach and colon out of your butt at extreme velocity and pressure. If you have to do this in say a public bathroom, you would probably be greeted with sounds of , "oh my god!", Is that a human? and someone call 911! This is all associated with what is known as dumping syndrome, or dumping for short. It can also be associated with rapid heart rate, flushed skin, dizziness and nausea. Thankfully I have learned to  drink slower and not overdo it. 
  Now tomorrow I get to start relearning this all over again with solid food. 
  SO i think that's where we will leave this. I know that literally on the way home from the doctors tomorrow me and the wife are going to stop and get some Indian food, ( soft meats, mushy veg, absolutely perfect) Chicken vindaloo  yay! lol. See you all soon, Thank you for being part of my support team, I love you all!

Here's my ending cartoon. 

.............Gotta get ahead...Ache?

   Welcome all my blog friends to another edition of , well, this blog of course. Not sure where that was meant to go, but it sure stalled. Well, I know you're just giddy with anticipation over how I am doing at this point. So let me say, well, I'm OK.  Not great, and not horrible. It is hard getting in all the liquids that you have to when you realize that that receptacle you're pouring those fluids into is now the size of a large straw. 
   So you try and you fit in the horse pill sized chew-able vitamins twice a day and the icky tasting calcium  tablets the size of half dollars as well, and those you cant have within  like 3 to 4 hours of the vitamins, so figure out that math. Add in the 64 ounces of liquid, and 60 to 70 grams of protein you have to have and its difficult to do without pain or discomfort. 
     I wanted to show you yet another picture of that amazing bed that transforms itself into a chair.
            

    Now thankfully the gas pains and weird hunger like pains which i associate with Gastritis, probably just due to the  removal of a large piece of stomach from the rest of it, have dropped in frequency, they haven't stopped but they aren't 24/7  like they were. Of course when things get better something has to get worse. Well first a few of my incisions aren't looking so wonderful, I've been using an antiseptic wash and using an antibiotic ointment on them recently to help but a few just don't look so good. Now since they are sealed with medical glue its not like i can blame it on sutures or anything those are all inside deep. 
    So I have to contact my surgical team first thing tomorrow. The worst however, was Saturday  morning about 6 AM i was awakened out of a sound sleep by one of the single most devastating headaches I have ever had. I removed myself tot he living room recliner and sat in darkness trying to get my head on straight. Which did not work. Now i knew i could take a Vicodin, but i had already stopped taking them the day before so i did not want to start again due to their propensity for lowering the respiratory function. So I know i cannot take aspirin nor any other NSAID, like naproxen or ibuprofen, they are absolute no-no's to a post surgery bariatric patient. 
   Well this headache literally had me on my knees tearing up like a baby. I literally started to wonder if I was having an aneurysm or a stroke. Thankfully neither was correct. After a series of cold compresses, my wife went to CVS up the street and got some liquid Tylenol.  It does not taste good, but It certainly helped. After an hour i was finally able to function, as of now I dread going to bed for fear that this headache might return. I don't know if it was dehydration? or Sleep-Apnea related or if it was a combination of things, although 
   I am leaning toward the perfect storm of multiple things all driving one powerful headache. I posted on the Bariatric pal forums and several other people mentioned they have had the same and they had been told they were due in part to the not taking in food for a several days and things associated with your body getting used to not having what it is used to having. I will of course mention it to the surgeon as well, if I can get some migraine meds that are allowed, if any, I would be happier just in case. 
  So things are to the point where food just dominates my thoughts. This stage that I am at is called Stage three and therefore I am on the stage three diet.  Basically it consists of liquids, ( you must get as close to 64 ounces per day as possible) mostly water or i like vitamin water. no caffeine no carbonation, no sugar. Which leaves so much to the imagination right? Well when i get clearance to go to stage four diet I will be able to incorporate eggs into my diet, which trust me, scrambled egg will be like the finest french meal ever. Haute cuisine will be nothing compared to this. 
  The other addition will be soft meats. Well what is soft meats, well tuna fish
 ( not whole tuna) mixed with some light mayonnaise is allowable, no bread however. Flaky type white fish, no breading, and I will be able to try some things like chili, and pulled pork, and maybe even ground beef turkey and chicken. I know I have dreams about eating some ground turkey sausage. 
Hopefully my nutritionist will allow me at least the scrambled egg for Christmas. We shall see.  
  Funny thing is my co workers in Hanover are having a Christmas pancake breakfast tomorrow morning and Since I am not taking pain meds anymore i was cleared to drive, so I am thinking about getting up early and showing up to say hello and to say merry Christmas and to thank them for the wonderful flowers and balloons and their support as well.
  Well I think that is enough for now. I hope you enjoyed it , see you all soon and i'll try to get another blog post up on my birthday the 23rd, tomorrow. lol 
P.S. You don't realize how many commercials and tv shows on tv deal with food until you want that food lol. 

Heres my cartoon for today, it explains a lot of what I am doing this for.

....................... Day 1 of the Days of our lives.

So hello all, I am back. Yes back from the hospital. Back from surgery, back from removing an organ I was pretty familiar with. By choice even. The day started out a bit rough, we had to wait in the pre op holding area for two hours, because there were some surgical needs that pushed us back. It is tough to get yourself ready  mentally,  and then have to wait. It is not a good thing. Eventually we got in and after donning thigh high anti-embolism stockings, ( white just isn't my color but they didn't have black fishnets.) Now since i have a history of bad IV's I made it a prime point to tell everyone involved about that. Well it worked they got a special Nurse Practitioner to com down and first she gave me some numbing agent then the IV went in nice and easy. One huge anxiety out of my anxiety list. The surgery was like blinking of course one second your a little tipsy feeling the next you're in recovery. Which is not a bad thing.
     One thing that amazed me, from recovery onward I was in the same bed. No switching around beds here and there. This was a first class over sized air inflatable bed that slowly moves the air around under you to relieve any sore spots. To make it even better this bed..is a transformer! Yes I am serious. This bed actually lifts you up, down, and all over to turn itself and you into a chair. Here are a few pictures to show you what I mean.
     

Here is a pic of One of my nurses. What was great is the bariatric patients are given to nurses with no more than a total of 3 patients. so that you get a lot of extra care. My  nurses were exemplary. From Mary ann in preop, to Chris in recovery, to Annie and Kevin on the floor.  Just the best, they really impressed me. Here is a picture of Annie.
 

So the surgery itself went well, they didn't do a hernia repair as they viewed it and decided it was too small to bother with,

Here is a video to show what they did o. No please do not watch if you are squeamish or weak of heart etc.

Well so I have had some jello here at home and sipping vitamin water. I'm going to take a break and relax in my big comfy chair.  Thanks for coming. 

............................Time for theater!

So welcome back everyone. Needless to say the call came through Friday December 12Th That Tuesday December 16th  will be my surgery. We have approval to get this done.
My emotions went from angry and depressed right to scared and anxious. Now its time to get the final preparations, marking up my water bottle...Wait i never explained that..Oh! well lets take a second and explain this. Since you have to take in so much water post surgery, but you can only take it in in small doses. You are constantly sipping water. Well Someone came up with  great idea, take a water bottle and using a sharpie, mark the times of day on the bottle versus where you should be in water.
  Now I saw this months ago but the folks over at Bariatric pal.com  were able to find the pic for me.  Well this weekend I happened to be at target picking up a few last minute gifts for my wife and looking for some yogurt etc. ( BTW) target is a great place to get the jello cups and jello pudding cups, sugar free of course. While there we came across a really nice bottle by  Nalgene, it is graduated with both ml and ounces.  So i bought it. When I got home and looked at the picture again I realized i bought the exact bottle, sans color, of the one used in the picture. So here is the picture of what was created.

 Smart idea huh.
Mine looks  the same although its more of a light green tint.
SO ive got so many thing done, I bought a pill crusher to take my pain meds and other meds with post op. I have to crush them and take them in a teaspoon of yogurt or juice. I have all my vitamins we found also at target which seems to be the only local store that carries Centrum Chewables plus iron. Tomorrow night we have the first shower using anti bacterial Hibiclens, then again the morning of surgery. We also have to do some picture taking for posterity and the measurements. Yes it has been advised to me to have someone I trust ( hope of course) measure my various body parts. Upper arm shoulders, chest, belly, waist upper thigh, lower leg neck etc then when I do hit a plateau i can fall back on the inches i have lost rather than just the pounds themselves to show the changes my body is undergoing.
  Well that's the blog post for now. I think I will have a special video post tomorrow night before the surgery, and hopefully a post right from the hospital after recovery.
Thanks to everyone who helped get me this far. The next step is the biggest.