I hate being overly busy. I seem to get nothing done. Time management is not something that I’ve been blessed with. It seems that if I work 8 hours (1st shift), I have no energy to do anything afterward. I was better on 3rd shift. Somewhere in my mind, I saw it as so much easier to accomplish things in the early morning while the rest of the world was starting their work shift. I like to be different. Working full time on 1st shift just kills me. The good news is that it’s about to change. As of Halloween, I’m outta here. We’re moving (that’s another story), and I may have a work-at-home opportunity. Maybe. I’ll know that real soon. I’m looking forward to having time to bring my website back to life!

I had my 18 month doc’s appointment a couple days ago. According to them, I’m doing great. According to myself, I’m pissed because I’m up 10 pounds. N E E D to get that back off and then some. My cholesterol is back over 200, but not really anything of concern… just need to watch that it doesn’t keep going back up. My B1 was actually a couple points high which is fine because “you just pee out any excess B vitamins”. But, that’s a good thing since I had the B1 deficiency a month post-op. I guess I just need to keep taking my butt-load of vitamins every day. I’ve been cleared to try to get pregnant. She said it’d be in my best interest to see a high risk obstetrician or at least one with experience with bariatric patients.

So I’m officially 18 months post-op. 180 pounds. That’s 103 down from my highest and 10 up from my lowest. I really need to get my act together and take off that 10 that I gained and at least another 10. But, whatever. I need to get bloodwork done probably this Friday and I have my 18 month follow-up appointment 8/19.

I borrowed this from another blog which was borrowed from yet another blog….

How similar is your life now to how you imagined it ten years ago? Twenty years ago? Are you exactly where you imagined you’d be? Or are you constantly asking yourself, “How did I get here?” Do you mourn the unrealized plans in your life? Or are you happy no matter what your circumstances?

20 years ago, I was 9. I don’t know what ambitions I had 20 years in the future from a child’s mind.

10 years ago… let’s go 12 years… I wrote a paper in my BPA class of where I thought I’d be in 10 years. I think the only thing I got right was who I’m married to. I don’t have kids. I don’t work at home (as much as I’d like to). I don’t live in Ortonville (though we’re working on that).

I’m at a place in my life where I just wish all the pieces would fall together. It could any day now. It could all be peachy. But, it’s never that simple for me. That’s what gets me down. How can such simple things be so easy for everyone else and impossible for me? These are things that I really don’t have any control over. I don’t really want to admit how important it really is, but in all honesty, if the one big piece doesn’t fall into place, it renders my entire life pointless. Yeah, it’s that important.

Yummy… http://drinkclick.com - thanks Melting Mama!
I had some this morning and it helped get me going. Now, it’s mid afternoon and I’m completely out of steam. If I could make another one I would. But, I’m at my lame-ass job answering the goddamn phone all facking day. If I had to do this on a daily basis I would’ve quit a long time ago. AAH!! < /rant >
On a serious note, it seems that after 6 hours stuck at this desk, I really do run out of steam. I’m hoping the Click protein might be a good mid-afternoon pick-me-up. I ordered a couple shaker cups so that will be possible - cuz the stuff needs more than a spoon to mix and I’m not bringing my Magic Bullet to work. Seriously right now I feel like I just can’t think any more. My short term memory seems to come and go. For a while I didn’t notice it, but now I’m feeling stupid again. I thought it was because I wasn’t eating carbs - I’ve heard that carbs keep the brain going. But, right now I’m definitely eating carbs, so I dunno.

Yeah, I’m up a few pounds, and I’m sick. We went to TN last week with the extended family and I of course got a cold now that we’re back. We did a lot of hiking and stuff - at least I got a lot of exercise. I sure haven’t been eating right lately. Not to mention that there are other factors in my life that are quite difficult to deal with right about now… nothing that I’m going to get into at the moment.

But anyway, there’s a cute site that will create a tag cloud for any website - here’s what it came up with for this blog….

I don’t know how this would work for a Gastric Bypass patient, but interesting nonetheless.

(WebMD) Eating a 600-calorie breakfast rich in carbohydrates and protein helps dieters lose more weight long term than eating a modest breakfast and following a lower-carb eating plan, according to a new study.

Breakfast and weight loss have long been linked, but the new research zeroes in on how to help dieters stick with a plan and not regain the lost weight by adjusting the amount of carbohydrates, protein, and calories eaten early in the day.

“Those on the ‘big breakfast diet’ feel less hungry before lunch and all day,” says Daniela Jakubowicz, MD, an endocrinologist in Caracas, Venezuela, and a clinical professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, who led the study. She is presenting her findings this week at ENDO 08, the 90th annual meeting of The Endocrine Society in San Francisco.

Breakfast and Weight Loss

With colleagues from Virginia Commonwealth University, Jakubowicz assigned 94 obese, physically inactive women, on average in their 30s, to two groups:

• The low-carb diet group of 46 women was allotted a daily total of 1,085 calories, and breakfast was the smallest meal.

  The women could have 290 calories at breakfast and only 7 grams of carbohydrates (a half slice of bread) and 12 grams of protein (such as two eggs). For the entire day, they could have 17 grams of carbs, 51 grams of protein, and 78 grams of fat.

• The big-breakfast group of 48 women got to eat 1,240 calories a day, and was asked to eat a breakfast of 610 calories. It was to include 58 grams of carbs, 47 grams of protein, and 22 grams of fat.

  The women could eat the breakfast in two or three stages, from the time they got up until 9 a.m. For the entire day, they could have 97 grams of carbohydrates, 93 grams of protein, and 46 grams of fat.

Both groups stayed on the diet for four months to lose weight, and then shifted to maintenance mode for the last four months.

At the four-month mark, the dieters eating the modest breakfast dropped about 28 pounds, while those on the big breakfast plan lost 23 pounds.

The real differences showed up at the eight-month mark, when the low-carb dieters had regained an average of 18 pounds and the big-breakfast eaters continued to lose, dropping another 16.5 pounds on average.

In all, members of the big-breakfast group lost more than 21% of their body weight; low-carb group members lost 4.5%.

A bonus, says Jakubowicz, is that the big-breakfast dieters reported less hunger and fewer cravings for carbohydrates than the other group.

Big Breakfast Diet

Some of the study findings make perfect sense and are well known to nutrition experts, says Joan Salge Blake, RD, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association and a professor of nutrition at Boston University, who reviewed the study for WebMD.

“We know women who don’t eat breakfast are more likely to do impulsive, unplanned snacking,” she says. “It’s no big surprise that having breakfast and having protein is a good thing when it comes to weight loss.”

“We know protein will have the biggest effect on the feeling of fullness,” she says. “It’s always important to have protein at each meal.”

But she has some misgivings about both diets, contending that the daily calorie allotment and the carbohydrate intake was too low in both groups.

“One hundred thirty grams of carbohydrate are the minimum for our brain to keep working,” she says, citing guidelines from the National Academy of Sciences.

To achieve weight loss, she advises eating breakfast every day, including protein at each meal, and also focusing on eating fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

While the participants in the study were all obese, Jakubowicz says she thinks the plan will work for those wth less weight to lose, too.

“I think this is the right way of eating, even if you are thin. I think it works for everybody and especially for obesity.”

Thursday when I got home from work, I ate what was left of that steak. A couple hours later, I had a little hamburger helper. I started feeling icky about this time. I went outside and walked around for a bit, as it got progressively worse. It felt like indigestion. I tried to keep moving. My throat kept making a weird sound - not quite a burp, but similar I guess… like a creaking. I came inside and leaned on the banister. I was sweating profusely, and my hands were feeling numb. I was getting really freaked out at this point. Hubby went upstairs and got me a Prevacid. After the sweating and numbness subsided a bit, I sat on the stairs - I still didn’t feel like moving. Pain kept building in my stomach, my throat would make that “creaking” - like it was releasing a tiny bubble, but I didn’t feel any come out, and the pain would subside, but it came right back. Finally, I vomited a little. My stomach felt immediately better. I still felt weak the rest of the night. I laid on the couch and fell asleep. I’ve had dumping, but never like this. Can it be food poisoning if it didn’t bother hubby? Maybe. He has a pretty strong stomach. I really thought something was wrong like a stricture, etc. I was kinda afraid to eat the next day. I stuck to soft, easy to digest food for a little while. I don’t know that I’m 100% now… it seems a little sensitive yet, but much better…. seems like it had to be the steak.

I had steak and corn for dinner last night. Then I drank half of a root beer (slowly). Shortly after, my stomach was feeling not so great. I stopped drinking the root beer. First it felt like bad indigestion, after a couple burps I thought it was going away, but then I started feeling like I needed to throw up - like my mouth was watering badly. I got up and moved around and went upstairs to get a Prevacid. I rocked in my office chair for a few minutes and it settled a bit. I still got the “near-puking” feeling a few more times last night and I woke up with it a couple times through the night and it came back again this morning. Seriously, WTF? I guess my stomach’s telling me I can’t eat as normally as I do sometimes. Maybe it can handle corn with a burger, but not with steak. Maybe I didn’t chew the steak long enough.