Tomorrow it's ON!

After a weekend of total debauchery, it is back to hard core dieting for me tomorrow.  And by hard core, I  mean Medifast.  First major undertaking in reinventing my success.  6-8 shakes a days for at least 6 weeks.  I'd really like to be able to go a full 8 weeks on just shakes to see if I can break the 200lb mark.  After that I'll go to 5 shakes a day and a "lean and green" meal for as long as it takes to get to 175.   I'm trying to be flexible on the timeline since I don't want to get to the point where I say screw it all and throw in the towel.  I'd much rather say, shoot, this is really hard and I know I can do 5 and 1 successfully.

My surgeon is very supportive of using Medifast as a tool, especially for folks like me who are having a hard time getting to their goal weight.  I know most of my problems now are food choices and lack of exercise so I think this is a great way to get back into diet mode and back to weight loss.  For the most part, it really fits into my lifestyle as well, especially the 5 and 1 plan.  My band is very "emotional" and any type of stress can get me in trouble. I've got a fairly stressful job and I have to be very careful at work about what I eat and how long I have to eat it.  Shakes take that out of the equation since they pretty much always go down nicely.   Swallowing a giant chunk of ice isn't that pleasant, so I do have to mindfully enjoy my shake or soup.

I'll post my starting weight tomorrow, which I suspect is gonna be over 240 after this weekend.  Now all I have to do is figure out how to add a picture and I can upload a current photo along with my starting weight.

Are we there yet?

Nope, not there yet!

I'm not sure what happened, well maybe I am, but I thought for sure I'd be at goal weight within 2 years of surgery.  I had lapband surgery on 10/28/2008.  This time last year I was down 86 pounds from surgery date and 109 lbs from my highest weight.  I'm currently up 12lbs from my post-op low and ready to get the scale moving in a downward fashion.

The first two years were a breeze more or less.  I was losing very slowly, but consistently.  I was letting my band do it's job and I was a dedicated exerciser.  Amazing how good exercise felt after losing all that weight!  I was walking 5-10 miles a week and going to a kick ass bootcamp class 2 days a week.  I was feeling fit, firm and thought I had it all under control.

But as life goes some times, a big monkey wrench came my way.  I totally overdid it on a hike one day and followed it up with a bootcamp work out and for all that effort I ended up with plantar fasciitis in my left foot.  It was like waking up with broken glass in the bottom of my heel and every step was excruciating.  So I did what any normal person would do, I quit working out.  Completely and totally.  No other exercise could compare with boot camp, so I didn't even try. 

I'm still not able to work out like I could before but I'm ready to make some changes and get back on track.  I really want to make it to my goal weight by the end of this year.  I've only got 60lbs to go, so it's totally reasonable, right?

So here I go, reinventing my success.  Success might not look like I thought it would, but I'm ready to try something different and see what happens.