My First 5K

Today I walked a 5K! Not only was this my first 5K but it was my first time participating in an organized athletic event of any kind. This was Strides For Epilepsy and it took place at City Park in Denver. My friend Brandy's son has epilepsy and they do this event every year. I am so glad I was able to join this time!

The weather was awful - cold and rainy - but we made the best of it and had a great time anyway!

Here's a pic of me in the car beforehand. I was happy to be there :)

Got all checked in and they gave me my number. I couldn't believe I got this number because 7 is my lucky number (and my birthday)... and I got 3 7's!!! Here I am all ready to go!

This is my friend Brandy ~ she's dressed up as Wonder Woman! The whole team was supposed to be dressed as superheroes and a lot of them did. I didn't get the memo in time. Brandy looked so freaking cute!! She normally runs but has 3 broken toes right now. I was happy to get to walk with her :)

Ian was there too and he took some photos while we were walking which was really nice. Here's my favorite one :

And finally ... 3.2 miles later... the finish line! We actually had to re-enact this because the camera wouldn't take the photo the first time... but I don't care! I'm just happy I finished :)

All in all it was a fun day for a great cause. Brandy's team raised almost $2,000. I just feel great to have accomplished this. I've never participated in any sort of organized athletic event before. I know a 5K isn't HUGE, but it's a great start for me. I wonder how many people out there have had weight loss surgery and 3 weeks later been out there doing a 5K. It makes me feel good that I am already being this active!! This week alone I've done FIVE one-hour workouts. Whoo hoo! I see many more of these types of activities in my future and I'm excited about it.

More Things I've Been Eating

I think I'll be doing these posts regularly, sort of as an update of various things I'm eating at different stages. I've eaten a bunch more different things since my last post so I thought I would share! At this point I am 3 1/2 weeks out and still in the semi-solid soft food stage. I'm still not eating anything crunchy or too difficult to chew.

So without further ado, here are some more things I've been eating lately.

I ate some of this pot roast a couple of times. While the flavor is absolutely delicious, I still find this to be a little too much chewing for me right now. Also I could only eat a small amount of the package before it went bad. Might be better when Ian can eat it too so we can get more use out of it while it's fresh. (The beans you see are edamame.)

I shared the egg beaters in my last post but this is just to show that I decided to add some ham. That was REALLY tasty and made it just like an omlette. :) I used thinly sliced deli ham so there wasn't too much chewing involved.

This is the same Market Pantry chicken salad that I mentioned in my last food post... here I had some diced pears with it, from a fruit cup. Funny thing... I always LOVED fruit cup pears before and now they tasted sickeningly sweet. I didn't care for them.

This was a breakfast one day. The colors look funky and I can't seem to fix it... but it's 2 ounces of cottage cheese with a swirl of yogurt mixed in... and 1 ounce of cantaloupe. I still absolutely love cantaloupe and I wish I could just sit down and eat the whole container of it, but I have only had a few small chunks since I am trying to stay focused on my protein intake.

Hormel chili... I buy the no beans one and add my own so that I can have a much higher proportion of beans. This is made up of 1 oz dark red kidney beans and 1 oz chili, plus 1/4 cup shredded cheese. It's pretty yummy... the picture looks gross, sorry. It really is yummy.

Ahhh, Morningstar Farms breakfast sausage patties!!! I love these. They are a meatless, soy based product. I have liked them for years, ever since a vegetarian roommate introduced me to them. I don't care for real sausage so I make these a lot. Now post op I am appreciating them even more because of their high protein and low calorie counts. I put a little cheese on top to make it more moist and tasty. The bottom pic with my hand in it is so you can get an idea of the size.

This morning I got even more creative and added some egg beaters on top:

Have to say this is a SUPER satisfying breakfast. 1 oz egg beaters and 1/2 slice american cheese were added. All in all makes for a breakfast with 15 grams protein. Excellent.

And here is another Morningstar Farms product I like:

Do they taste exactly like a real chicken nugget? No. But I do like them. Good flavor and spices to it. Each nugget has 3 grams protein. I am NOT able to eat 3 nuggets, I discovered. So I eat 1/2 a string cheese with 2 nuggets for a total of 10 grams protein in the meal. I use nowhere near that much ranch.

I tried these fish fillets... seemed like an easy way to get some fish. They were OK but not something I'd buy again. I'll have to try making some of my own fish :) I was able to eat 1/2 this fillet, 2 ounces.

A shrimp cocktail... can we say heaven? Delicious cold shrimp and the kick of the cocktail sauce, oh yum. Shrimp are amazingly high in protein! This was 2 ounces and had 14 grams protein! I barely touched the sauce, will have to serve much less next time. Probably used not even 1/2 a tablespoon. I will definitely be eating shrimp often!! Low cal, no carbs, high protein and delicious!

 Banana with peanut butter! I might be the only person who has never combined these foods. Everyone says how much they love it. But personally I was always afraid of trying it for some reason. It just didnt appeal to me. I decided to go for it though and i loved it! This is 1/2 a very small banana cut into slices with a TBS of peanut butter split between the pieces. I saved the other half of the banana in some tin foil in the freezer, planning to have it later. I had heard bananas had protein so I thought the combo would be a very high protein snack, but in this small of a portion the banana comes out to zero protein. I probably won't have this too often but it would be great for satisfying a sweet tooth :)

3 Weeks Post Op

Yesterday was my 3 week post op appointment. Again, it wasn't with my surgeon, just the nurse. Sigh. I am pretty sure at this point that the surgeon's business is too big for his own good as I rarely see him for anything and things around there are so confusing. Regardless, it was a really good appointment still. Of course the first order of business was the weigh-in:

This is 10 lbs lost since my 1 week appointment. I am definitely happy with that. I have been really working my tail off making the right food choices, getting in all my protein, getting in all my water, and going for my walks. My total loss now in 3 weeks is:

Whoo hoo! I'll take it. It's tough not to wish it was an even 30 but really, in the past it could take me 3 months to lose this much weight, so I will not complain ;)

I asked her all of my questions... the pain in my stomach is most likely caused by scar tissue. She says I probably pulled it away from my abdominal wall when I felt like I "pulled the muscle"... my aunt had told me the exact same thing (from her own previous experience) so with two sources I'm going to believe it I guess lol. I just hope it stops hurting soon.

As for strength training, I am supposed to wait until 6 weeks to do any. She said if I REALLY want to do some, no more than 5 pounds, but she would prefer if I just wait. Swimming on the other hand, I can do as soon as my incisions are healed up. I'm guessing another week to week and a half for that. I would really love to do some swimming, and that would be a good way to be getting an arm workout without lifting weights.

Also I mentioned that my back pain is out of control and the prescription the surgeon gave me at my last visit (for Ultram) didn't do anything to help. She suggested Celebrex, but said I need to go to my PCP to get that prescribed. So sometime soon I'll have to get an appointment for that. She said it's the only NSAID that is okay to take for whatever reason... sounds good to me.

As for Ian, he had his one week appointment and got his drain pulled. He did better with that than I did lol. He has been walking the past few days and eating his soft food diet of yogurt, cottage cheese, refried beans and egg beaters. His pain is getting better but he is actually having a harder time than I did and needed a refill on his oxycodone. We both thought he would heal faster than I did but that hasn't been the case so far. But the good news is the medicine is really helping him. He even worked from home for 6 hours today.

As for his weigh in, in his first week he lost:

16 pounds! Yay for my honey!

We also had to go to new nutrition courses this week. Ian went to his one-week class but we BOTH went to the 3 week class, so he doesn't have to go back to that later. Unfortunately when we tried to go we were running late (their fault, not ours) and then we get to the elevators and they are not functioning. So we had to hike up SIX flights of stairs to make it to class. In our shape this was really hard. I did okay, but Ian is only one week out so it really took all of his energy. Of course after class, when we had to go DOWN, the elevators were working. LOL. Oh well, I guess we burned some extra calories :)

I am really looking forward to doing my one month photos and measurements and making some comparisons!! 10 days to go! I have so much more to blog about but I'm so behind... more posts coming soon.

Manic Monday

Today I'm participating in Manic Monday :)




Basically on Monday you take pics of the things you do throughout the day and then blog about it at the end of the day!

So, today I started my morning with a walk. Since I am now post weight loss surgery, I have been walking almost every day for the past two weeks, increasing my time and/or distance whenever I can. I wanted to join my friend this coming weekend on a walk for epilepsy (her son has it) and she said it is a 5K (aka 3.2 miles)... which sounded like a lot and I wasn't sure I could do it. So I needed to see how far I am normally walking right now so I could get an idea of if I'd be able to do it or not. I got this app on my phone called walkmeter so I tried it out on my walk today.

Whoo hoo! I walked 2.48 miles which means yes I CAN do the 5K this weekend :) I felt proud. If you want to see more about this app, I went into detail about it here on my health blog.

My friend Taryn accompanied me on the walk today and by the way, it was HOT out. Much too hot for me at 80 degrees at 9:30 in the morning. The sun was baking us so we decided to go through the sprinklers in the park.

After I rested a while after my walk, I took a little trip to Target. My grocery trips are pretty small these days, but I did need a couple of things.

Besides my groceries I also found a cheap tank top (for walking in) and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 was on sale for $5! I really like that movie because of the location - I loved my trip to Greece and I get to relive it a little when I watch this movie :)


Because of surgery, I haven't been to Starbucks in a while, at least not for coffee. But I HAVE been enjoying this frosty treat...

Yep, water. Exciting, isn't it? Would you laugh if I told you it actually is? :) hehe. Since there is a Starbucks in Target I usually get a free ice water to drink while I'm shopping, or to take home with me. It was 95 degrees when I left Target, so this went down reaaaallly nicely.

OK next, this picture is not FROM today, but I received it today so it is going to make an appearance. This is me and Brandy (the one I'll be doing the 5K with this weekend) at her birthday party on New Year's Eve. She just now got these photos from a friend who took them at the party, and she passed this on to me. I love it :)

Tonight was also Ian's first time going for a walk post-op. I went with him so I got in a second walk for today! He was able to go for 30 mins and quite a bit faster than I was able to do my first time out. I'm so proud of him!

It was really nice walking in the evening with no sun beating down on me, but all the bugs everywhere wanting to fly into my mouth made it a little less pleasant lol. All in all it's been a really nice day!

Walkmeter iPhone App

I don't know if I would call this a review, as I haven't really gotten into all of the features or anything. But I did want to share this app because I tried it out today and I really really like it. I wish I had been using it since my first walk, especially since I already had it on my phone... but I just didn't think about it and I'm kicking myself now! I wish I could compare and see how much progress I've made in the last two weeks.

Anyway so here it is - Walkmeter for iPhone and iPod Touch.

When I start my walk I just hit "start." It paused when I stopped to take a picture, and then I just had to hit start again, and it kept it all as one walk. When I was finished with my walk I clicked "done", and this is what I saw:

How awesome! I see the length of my walk, my average pace, the distance I covered, and the calories burned (based on my weight which I input in the settings.) If you look at the bottom of the picture you can see I'm on the "stopwatch" screen. Then I clicked over to the "map" screen.

Now how awesome is this. My walk - on a map. It even shows my starting point (the green bubble), and the points where I hit 1 mile and 2 miles. Mile markers! This for some reason amazed me lol.

I then saved this route, calling it Fox Run Figure 8... it makes me think of a figure 8 because I start in the middle, loop to one side, returning and then looping the other side and coming back to my starting point. Next is the calendar screen...

This is another one of my favorite features. It will keep all of your walks on a calendar. You can store a year's worth of walks (or runs!) and look back at every single walk you have done. As you can see above this shows the recap of pace, time, distance, and the name of the route. If I click the arrow for that walk, I get to see all of the stats:

I love that I can look back on all of this stuff for any walk, not to mention that I will automatically have a calendar of all the days I have walked. I also think the graphs are so much fun, seeing my elevation changes and my pace fluctuations. The huge spike at the end was the last couple of minutes when I slowed way down to cool down. I realized I should probably stop the clock before I do that because it probably drags down my 'average pace'. My usual pace was more like 18 min/mile but at that end part was 33 min/mile so it gave me an average of 21 min/mile. It is just going to be so much fun to see how I progress in my walking. I have already gotten so much better in just two weeks. The first day it took me 30 minutes to walk just one tiny portion of this walk and now look at me :) whoo hooo.

I think this app is really neat and I have lots more playing around to do with it but I wanted to share in case anyone else has an iPhone and could benefit from this! I believe it is $4.99 in the app store.

Things I've Been Eating

Since being told I could move on to the soft food diet, I've been so happy! I wanted to share the things I've been eating.

Denver Scramble

This doesn't contain ham because I didn't have any, but I bought some yesterday and I plan to add it the next time around. I used egg beaters (forget exactly how much i made, I think around 3/4 cup in liquid form)... added 1/4 cup shredded colby jack cheese, salt and pepper, and diced up onions, red peppers, and green peppers. Next time I'll use ham and I'll also calculate out everything so I can share this as an actual recipe with nutritional info.

This was my prep:

Relish Tuna Salad

This is the first thing I ate when I came home and was allowed to try soft foods. It turned out so tasty. I used two small tuna packets which equaled about 5 ounces. Here is my 'recipe':

- 5 oz tuna

- 2 tbs light or fat free mayo

- 2 tsp mustard

-2 tsp sweet relish

- 2 tsp finely diced onion

Right now (2 1/2 weeks post op) I can eat about 2 to 2 1/2 ounces of this.

Edamame (Soy Beans)

I figured this was a good choice because it is both a vegetable AND a protein source. In general veggies or fruits should be a small portion of my meal right now but this had as much protein as some of the other things I've been eating... so I had 1 oz of these beans, sprinkled with sea salt, and 1 oz string cheese as my meal. The beans are fairly soft to begin with but I chewed them very well to make sure they were soft enough going down. I found this brand at Target and they are already fully cooked so I only have to nuke in the microwave for about 30-45 seconds and they are ready to go.

Frigo Light Mozzarella String Cheese

I picked out this brand of light string cheese to try (also from Target) and I am very happy with how it tastes. It tastes like full fat, delicious mozzarella. Each stick is one ounce... I thought maybe this was by weight (not volume) so I tore one up into pieces to see if it fit in my 1 oz shot glass, and it did. So it is truly a volumetric ounce. 1 oz has a whopping 8 grams of protein, wow! That's great. I have been having these with some of my meals, either a full stick or just half depending on what else I'm eating.

Cantaloupe

Figured this was good as a soft fruit... this is what I had for breakfast today with my egg beaters. I did about 1 1/2 ounces of the egg beaters and 1 ounce of the cantaloupe. I think I should do less cantaloupe next time though, keep my focus on the protein source. It tasted soooo delicious though :) Refreshing. This is my first fruit since surgery.... other than licking a cherry the other day LOL. Yep, licked it.

Chicken Salad

I do plan on making my own chicken salad and I have all the stuff to do so... but I LOVE the chicken salad they make at Target so I just had to get a container. It is so very tasty. I had 1 1/2 ounces of it with 1/2 ounce of light mozzarella.

These are the things I've been eating so far. I was posting some of the pics on Facebook today and a friend/loyal reader said she was surprised how much they let me eat and that she thought it would be a lot less. Keep in mind that I bought these small dishes expressly for the purpose of making my small portions look bigger and helping me feel more normal and satisfied. As a reminder, here is one of the photos from when I bought the dishes so you can see how small they are:

(Dinner plate, salad plate, my tiny appetizer plate)

It gave me an idea though, I'll have to put one of my meals on my regular dinner plate next time as a comparison. I guess I should look at it like, if my meals are looking large, then I accomplished my goal because that's what the small dishes were supposed to achieve :)

Feeding the Hunger

I hate to borrow from Weight Watchers, but I think their hungry monster is the cutest thing ever LOL.

So I have been struggling with major hunger since day one of my surgery and it has been incredibly frustrating. I kept wondering if something was wrong with my surgery and it wasn't going to work, or if something was wrong with me and everyone else was tougher than I am... something like that. As you know I was on one ounce of select soft foods every two hours. I was still hungry ALL the time.

Well yesterday as we were getting ready to leave the hospital, I had a stroke of good luck. Kim came in to talk to Ian. She is the head of the entire bariatric program at the hospital. She was asking us questions about our experiences and how everything went since doing the VSG (Sleeve) is still such a new thing there. Funny she made a comment about always going to see each patient, cuz I never saw her! But that's okay, she redeemed herself! I mentioned to her that I had been hungry this whole time, that I was on the restricted soft foods, one ounce every two hours, etc. She told me that was way too restrictive and that if I was experiencing hunger, I should advance to the full soft foods diet... and ALSO I could have anywhere from 1 to 4 ounces every 2-3 hours!

I asked, how can I advance to the next food stage when the class isn't until Wednesday? I don't really know what I can have. She took the time to write down some notes for me!

So as of now I can have:
- Any meat that I can mash up to a mushy consistency. The easiest things are tuna salad and chicken salad but I can do other things too.
- Some fruits and vegetables that are soft and chewed well
- Any kind of fish
- Peanut butter
- Soft cheeses, white cheeses are preferred because they have less fat
- Protein bars, the more dense the better, no hard crunchy ones
- Soups and Chilis

Each meal should be at least 90% protein, only 10% complex carbohydrates from fruits and vegetables.

She also said that even though they usually do not crack down on the 'no drinking during or after meals' until you're on completely solid food, that I should start now and see if it helps with my hunger. So I am not drinking after my meals for an entire hour.

I started that yesterday, and also had some tuna salad that I made up, which I was able to eat 2 ounces of. It helped, but I still felt hungry sooner than I should. The next meal was more tuna and I had 2 1/2 ounces, and this time I felt full the whole rest of the night.

Today has been great - no hunger bothering me today!! This morning I had egg beaters with cheese, diced onions and red and green peppers, of which I ate 2 ounces. My next meal was more of the tuna salad - 2 ounces. My third meal was 1 ounce chicken salad with a 1 oz mozzarella string cheese. My fourth meal was 1 ounce chicken salad and 1 ounce edamame (soy beans). The only time I've felt hunger today is right before I go to eat again, and most of these meals have lasted me 3 hours, not just two!!

I am feeling SO RELIEVED. Nothing is wrong with me, I just needed more substantial food in a larger amount. The thing is, the Sleeve is a 3-4oz stomach right off the bat, whereas gastric bypass patients have a 1oz stomach to start. Since the sleeve is new and not popular yet due to no insurance coverage, they group us with the bypass people. We have their nutrition classes, their instructions and guidelines... but a bigger stomach!!! I mean I can't even eat the 3-4 ounces yet which is great, but I can eat 2 - 2 1/2 so no wonder I was fricken hungry all the time... I was never filling my stomach more than half way with each meal! Kim said they have a lot of work to do developing the program for the sleeve, and this is obviously a major oversight right now. My surgeon was just telling me "the hunger will go away." Kim is a Dr. as well as the director of this whole program so I trusted her too and obviously she was right. I feel so much better and finally feel HAPPY that I did this instead of worried that something was wrong.

Cheers to no hunger pains!!!