Monthly Archives: August 2012

Day 2, Liquid Diet!

Good evening!

Ok, so today is the end of day two of my liquid diet! I would love to tell you that I am doing great, but in reality today has been a really grumpy kind of evening! I think I am just hungry, and anxious, and having some serious withdrawals from sugar! Even though my sugar intake over the last few months has been, well, at least for the most part minimal, I am now withdrawing from everything else!!! I think my biggest side effects of this liquid diet so far is exhaustion, headache, and some serious moodiness!!! Last night I was uber-weepy, and this evening I have just been unreasonably grumpy (poor Jason!)!!! 😉

My saving graces, food-wise right now is pea soup, sugar free pudding, and fat-free plain Greek yogurt!! Ok, so now that I have written that last sentence, I have to amend that a bit – my saving grace has been my awesome sweetie, supporting me, holding my hand, encouraging me, and helping keeping me busy when I get really antsy, so I have to give a great BIG shout out to him! I have said it before and I will say it again! I would NEVER have gotten this far without his help!! 😉

Anyway, the night is late, and I am soooo tired, so I am going to keep this post really short, and head up to get a good nights rest!!

Here is to a FABULOUS evening! ;-)

 If you want to have a different life, you have to live differently!

Day 1, Liquid Diet!

Good evening!

It is so hard to believe that the time for my liquid diet to start has come, and I have almost made it all they way through my first day! WHEW!! The start of the liquid diet means, that I have only 2 weeks to go before my big day!! 😉

For those of you who may not know, since the middle of April, I have lost 40 pounds, and have been on a journey toward getting bariatric surgery! A laporoscopic gastric bypass roux en y, to be more exact! It has been a long and sometimes very difficult journey, but I am so close now I can almost touch it!!

I am on a liquid diet for the next two weeks, and on September 4th, at exactly 2:30 pm I will be going in for my procedure! I have done all that has been asked of me, and have received my approval letter from my insurance, so all is ready to go! Well, everything  except this two week liquid diet.

Now, I have been getting so many questions, so I thought I would take a moment to answer a few for you, that is if you are curious…

Why if you have already lost 40 pounds, would you still go through with the surgery?

  • Well, the answer to that is that with about 90 more pounds to go to, and if I were able to do it all on my own, I would have done it a loooong time to go, and I know that weight loss surgery is just going to be one tool in a whole arsenal of get fit and healthy tools. Just a sampling of some of the other tools being exercise, nutrition, meditation, faith, and personal support!

Isn’t bariatric surgery the easy way to get healthy?

  • The easy way out??? Anyone who thinks that weight loss surgery is the easy way, has NEVER TRIED IT THEMSELVES!!! It is a load of hard work, and is gonna take some more serious determination to succeed!!

I have friends who have had bariatric surgery, and they have gained their weight back. What makes you think you will succeed?

  • You know, I can only answer for myself, since everyone has their own stories, but I know that even with the surgery, I know that health and fitness is something I am going to have to always me mindful of, for the rest of my life. I know that his is the right step for me!

I am so nervous, and yet so excited at the same time! I saw my hubby have the same procedure exactly 4 weeks ago, and he made almost all parts of the process look like a piece of cake!! I really hope that I can make it look just as easy!!

Anyway, this liquid diet lasts for two weeks, and the purpose of it is to help shrink my liver so that when they move it out of the way for my surgery, it doesn’t get injured or damaged in any way!! AND the liquid diet really consists of some foods too: yogurt, skim milk, sugar-free pudding, j-ello, V-8 juice, smooth soups, decaffienated teas, Crystal Light, no-sugar-added cocoa. So, I do have quite a few options!!! 😉

Anyway, it is getting late, and I would like to spend some quality time with my sweetie before bed!! I will make sure to keep you posted of my progress!!

Here is to a FABULOUS evening! ;-)

 If you want to have a different life, you have to live differently!

My Adventures in Blueberries!

Good evening!

Last week, I had gotten a phone call from my girlfriend BobbieJo to see if we wanted to go pick blueberries with her! Jason and I immediately jumped at the chance, and the date was set for Monday evening to get together and go have some fun gathering our berries!

We went out to this awesome little farm out in Keizer! The farm worked on an honor system. They provide buckets so that you can fill them, weigh them, and then you drop the appropriate amount of money into a locked box!! It was so SA-WHEET!!!

This was my first time going blueberry picking! I was really so excited to learn how to choose the right berries and get started! BobbieJo and Jason were old pros at it, having picked all sorts of berries ever since they were really young! Someday when Jason and I have our little farm, we will get all sorts of experience picking all sorts of fruits and veggies – I can’t wait, but I realize I am digressing! Back to that evening! 🙂

By the way… I was told that this is the PERFECT blueberry!! I know it sure was pretty and it DEFINITELY tasted perfect!!! Matter-of-fact, I ended up eating so many blueberries that I was worried I wouldn’t be able to fill my bucket! SOOOO YUMMY!!!! 😉

I was so proud of my bucket of berries, until I look at BobbieJo’s and Jason’s buckets! I guess I hadn’t realized that all blueberries should actually be BLUE!! As you can see I had quite a number of reddish berries in my bucket! Oopsie!! Oh well, I still thought they tasted good!! 😉

Jason picked soooo many blueberries! He filled up his own bucket and then helped me fill up the rest of my bucket! Thanks, Babe! 🙂

Here is BobbieJo busily, and happily “clean picking a bush”! She was single-mindedly determined to get this little bush cleaned of all of it’s ripe berries!! She has way more determination than I do! I think I actually got bored with this bush after about 1/2 an hour! I am sure my flitting from bush to bush must have driven poor Miss BobbieJo crazy!! 🙂

I had to take a picture of a couple of the slugs out there! There were so many out, and the later it got the more there seemed to be. My theory was to watch carefully where I stepped, and to just keep moving so no one would get any funny ideas to slither up onto my foot! *SHUDDER!*

Here is BobbieJo and I showing off some of our bounty for the evening! ok, so I realize it doesn’t look like much, but this was a newer bucket! 🙂 Jason and I ended up going home with two large bowls chocked full of these little blueberries of goodness, and I think BobbieJo had a large bowl all of her own too!!

Well, it was getting late, so BobbieJo and I then made a date to finish the blueberry prep at her place in a few days! Well, that new date was today!

After enjoying lunch and some really great stories and chatting with some friends, Jody, Julie, Marty, BobbieJo, Ashley, and Mark, it was time to get busy in the kitchen taking care of our blueberries!

BobbieJo found this great low-sugar recipe in this really cool Taste of Home book!! YEAH!!!

This is BobbieJo in teacher mode, which is kind of fitting because she does happen to run a daycare!! and I figure if she can handle kids, she could definitely handle us!! 😉

Here is our stack of supplies! Thankfully BobbieJo has ever single kind of ingredient on hand in her UBER-ORGANIZED kitchen!! So she was able to help us fill in the blanks!! 😉

Julie and I spent most of our time sorting blueberries!! She is so cool, and has been a lot of fun to get to know!! It is amazing how much she and I have in common, actually it is kind of a little spooky! In the BEST POSSIBLE WAY!! 😉

The fabulous Miss BobbieJo did all of the pureeing and cooking, and if you take a peek behind her, you will see just a glimpse in her cupboard of the aforementioned UBER-ORGANIZED kitchen!! 😉

Here is my sweetie, enjoying watching the progress! He is just happy since the blueberry jelly we made is really low in sugar!

Here we are, Julie, myself, and BobbieJo!! I know that all three of us had such a fun day getting to know each other better, and making goodies in the kitchen, that we already have plans to do this all over again, but this time with blackberries!! I seriously cannot wait!!!

Until then…

Here is to a FABULOUS evening! 😉

 If you want to have a different life, you have to live differently!