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Week 44 – Hilo – 144 lbs – August 19, 2012

I lost a pound!!! Hopefully I broke the stall (spell, hex, plateau, bad streak, or whatever you want to call it!). After being 145/146 for the last 6 weeks, I am finally down to my lowest weight in 40 years. WOW.

Working out a little longer each day might have helped me break the stall!

I stepped up my workouts this past week and reduced my goodie intake, both by just a small amount but who knows, maybe that did the trick. I’m not obsessed with losing these last few pounds at all, but it’s feels good to know that I have to work at this. Just because I have a small stomach and everyone tells me how little I am these days, doesn’t mean that I don’t have to pay attention. If I stop exercising and eat lots of stuff I shouldn’t, I could start gaining again and that would simply NOT be acceptable! Even though I lose abysmally slow, I’m OK because it makes me feel normal, that I haven’t taken the easy way out. Just because I had WLS doesn’t mean I will keep losing weight. But it’s also important to me that I don’t feel like I’m ‘on a diet’ because that just messes with my brain. I feel normal, I feel healthy, I feel good and I’m hoping that will all translate into losing a few more lbs, even if it does take me a long time!

 

The fact is, I used to think (pre-sleeve) that I ate pretty normally; I never felt that I ate volumes of food and I certainly was never a closet eater. I did suck at exercise, though. But how many of us made good choices and we still kept gaining weight? How many of us tried diet after diet and failed? I used to get so irritated hearing how people would say they lost all this weight on this or that diet, only to gain it back and more. Why would that piss me off? Because I couldn’t even lose it! I really tried, mostly the usual suspects that I thought were reasonable, like WW, JC, and the lot. Still, I kept gaining.

 

So I’ve accepted the fact that I am a medical miracle: YES, I WAS BORN WITHOUT A METABOLISM! I used to think I had a slow metabolism, but nope, I’m now convinced I never had one at all, nada, zip, nothing. So for me (and others like me), we have to eat a very little amount, sweat our butts off and be rewarded with a loss of 1 lb every 6 weeks. OK then, I’m 3 lbs from goal, so maybe I’ll get there in 4 months! HAH! And silly me thought I could lose weight without WLS……..right. Like that was ever going to happen.

I initially thought that surgery was a drastic measure for the Morbidly Obese (really can there be a more unattractive-sounding noun?). Well imagine my shock and horror at finding out that at 5’3″ and 223 lbs I had a BMI of 39.5 …….40.0 is Morbidly Obese! HELLO???? People thought I was living in Hawaii and traveling the world, but I was really LIVING IN DENIAL the whole time! But we see what we want to see, hear what we want to hear, make excuses for our weight when really, it often isn’t a character flaw, it’s a chemical flaw! (Or in my case of course, a MEDICAL MIRACLE….LOL). How lucky for us that WLS is an option these days. Because some of us need a solution that traditional diets don’t offer, like say, a success rate! Personally, although I would have loved to be thin in my earlier years, I’m actually glad I waited, because the Sleeve has been a perfect solution for me and it hasn’t been around that long. Much easier for me to wrap my head around the sleeve than the Gastric Bypass. It all worked out just fine. At 58, I feel much younger and I wouldn’t want to be any other age than I am right now!

Changing topics a bit, I have to say my post last week on Fifty Shades of Grey sure brought in a lot of comments both here and on the forum. Overall, it was just one poorly written book (IMHO). But I give the author credit for getting people to react to it that’s for sure. For those who are considering reading the whole trilogy or those who have already read it, I really encourage you to read Katrina Lumsden’s reviews of the books. The reviews (accompanied by some very, very funny gifs) are just hysterical. It made reading the first book completely worth it just to read her reviews. I personally will forgo Book 2 and 3 but again, loved, loved, loved the reviews. They will give you a good laugh for the week! Click here for the first one: Katrina’s Fifty Shades Review.

Hilo Bay looking back at downtown and majestic Mauna Kea

Next week will be my last post from Hilo, Hawaii. Then it’s on to Oahu for a month before we head to Europe. As I’m winding down on the Big Island, I’m thinking of the little things I will miss here: the apple bananas (small and delicious!) the papaya (4 for $1.00!) the buttery avocados (pick them off the trees!) the incredible orchids, ginger and other tropical flowers. The fragrances of tuberose and pikake just wafting through the air on my run. Beautiful, graceful Hilo Bay and the charming downtown area; rarely do we go in to town and not run into someone we know. My husband proposed to me here, we were married here and lived here for 10 years. It will always be in my heart. But it’s time to go on to a new adventure, and just like life, it’s the little things (even a one lb loss!) and new adventures that make it all exciting and worthwhile.

A hui hou,

Queen of Crop

6 Responses
  • Karen Allison
    August 19, 2012

    Inspiring and well written once again. I have read the trilogy and look forward to the reviews you mentioned. Good luck on your next pound 🙂

    • queenofcrop
      August 19, 2012

      Hi Karen…..Thanks for the comment and enjoy the reviews! On to 143 lbs! (Check back in a month or so…haha).

  • Joni
    August 19, 2012

    I’m just wondering what is making you and hubby move to Europe (Amsterdan is it?)when you live in a paradise like Hawaii?? Sounds like a place you wouldn’t want to leave?

    • queenofcrop
      August 19, 2012

      Aloha Joni! Ah, the old ‘why are we moving from Hawaii to Amsterdam’ question! I may write about this in a blog in a few weeks, but let me give you the quick answer here. We’ve been in Hawaii for 12 years and it’s been great. But we miss living in a big city so went in search of ‘what’ big city we wanted to move to. We thought it might be Seattle (my husband lived there for years and loved it, we also lived in San Francisco and he lived in NYC and Chicago). We traveled for a year last year and when we landed in Amsterdam, we felt at home. The people are not just nice, but they are a happy culture. Happy with themselves, happy with you, they love life and don’t take it so seriously. They love art and so do we. They are very liberal and so are we. They don’t mind speaking English (and many people in other countries do mind). If it all works out, we will come back to Hawaii in the winter for some sun as we still own property here. We have tended to reinvent ourselves every 10 years or so and this is just the next chapter! Stay tuned to see how it all turns out.
      Thank you for reading my blog.

  • Brenda
    August 20, 2012

    On your comments this week about your weight loss, I have to mention something that falls into that “easy way out” having surgery. I watch a weight loss show on Sunday’s. It’s called extreme weight loss. It’s about a person losing weight over a year. On Monday mornings that person is on Good Morning America. Now don’t get me wrong I love GMA but last week they had a lady on that had lost the weight over a year and the newsperson (Laura) kept going on in the promo about how she had lost the weight the HARD WAY without any surgery. It just ticked me off to keep hearing her say that and I thought to myself, no wonder people have such a negative perception of people having weight loss surgery when they hear people on TV say they did it the “easy way”.

    • queenofcrop
      August 20, 2012

      Thanks Brenda! I like GMA so I’m surprised they did that. I’m sure they’ll hear about it! Would make an interesting discussion on the forum but I have a feeling we would all feel the same way…..not the easy way, but the most effective way! Thanks for reading my blog and I appreciate the comments.

      QofC

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