Weekly weigh-in

I had a pretty kick-ass week with a loss of 6.3 pounds.  Hooray!  I have to say that the weight loss is feeling great.  Just in case you may be under the assumption that the surgery did all the work, think again!  I have been exercising a lot and watching the food I eat like a hawk.  I weigh, measure and record every piece of food I have and I'm one hundred percent honest with myself.  The surgery is but a tool.

I had a post-op visit with my surgeon today.  It went really well.  He told me that I am doing a fantastic job on my weight loss.  In fact, he said I am on the high end of loss for those at the same stage as me.  That was a great boost.  I did talk to him about what should be the primary focus - how much protein I get in or the amount of calories.  He told me I should be focusing on both.  I shouldn't get in too much more than 600 calories a day on average, even when I exercise.  He explained that most of the significant weight loss will happen in the first six months.  After that, things drop off dramatically so I want to be sure I'm in the weight loss mode now more than ever.  He is strict on how fast I progress through the stages of adding food back in.  Some doctors move their patients pretty quickly to foods such as chicken or red meat, but that isn't what he does.  Something he explained to me that was surprising is that he said your tummy actually shrinks even more in the weeks following surgery before it gets to a point that the restriction isn't as significant as in the initial phases.  So basically he told me to keep doing what I'm doing.  We talked about other issues I'm having, such as the low blood sugar, light-headedness and more.  He was very patient with all of my questions, which I appreciated.  Sometimes I feel like I ask too many questions, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

Change of gears.  A couple of days ago, I posted a picture of myself online in Facebook, MyFitnessPal and on Instagram that was an updated shot of what I'm looking like now after six weeks post-op.  Here it is if you didn't get the opportunity to see it.

I have been floored at the sheer volume of people that have told me I look beautiful and pretty. Sometimes I expect comments like that from friends because it's just something we do:  "Oh, you look so beautiful today" or "Oh my gosh, don't you look pretty!"  However, I posted this picture in a gastric bypass group and on my Instagram feed, so not everyone in those places knows me personally.  They have no vested interest in saying I look pretty except if it's coming from an honest place.  This has been so shocking to me, on one hand, and difficult to deal with on the other.  Of course a woman always loves to hear compliments, but one of my biggest self-esteem issues has always been that I think I look ugly.  I always had a different kind of look.  I wasn't a blonde Barbie but I also wasn't the typical Asian girl either.  My ethnic background is very unique with me being Filipino, German, Hungarian, Norwegian and Scandanavian.  I never really felt like I looked like anyone else and, therefore, on the outside looking.  But here are perfect strangers telling me quite the opposite.  It just helped me realized that I can stop hiding behind my body and come to accept myself just as I am right in this moment, a creation of God, and that's better than just okay.  I don't have to beat myself up by saying that I'm ugly.  Besides, a person is only truly ugly if they're ugly on the inside and I know I'm not.  These are exactly the sorts of things that keeping on weight does for me.  It convinces me that I'm some sort of monster dragging her hands on the ground when that's just not true at all.  When I embrace myself, I am happy with who I am.  Look at that smile in the picture ... that's not fake.