70 pounds!!!

Honestly, I just can’t believe it, 70 pounds down – no 70.5 pounds down and 29.5 to go. TWENTY something to go! Unbelievable! 6 months (and one week) ago I woke up from surgery thinking I had made a huge mistake. I mean what if it didn’t work? What if I failed… again… Two weeks ago I was really starting to get discouraged. My band didn’t “work” yet and I was hitting my limits. I had thought of taking a little “break” from it all – which is a huge warning sign for me.

I am sooo glad that my band is now working! I have restriction – not ideal, but enough for now. I am learning to eat like a “good bandster” again and although I routinely take too big of bites or forget to chew it feels great. I still get hungry a little too soon and sometimes I can eat more than I should, but most of the time the band is there helping. I am not hungry 24/7 and don’t think about food all day. It is WONDERFUL!!

Now that my band is working I feel like I have gotten a second wind. I have lost 5.5 pounds in the 1.5 weeks which is more than the prior 4 weeks combined. Hopefully, I can keep this progress up, but I have noticed that burning 2400 calories a day is starting to get very hard. For some reason the last 5 pounds made a huge difference in my burn. But I am starting the training for the half marathon in a couple weeks so I expect to get some help from that. I also get a few free passes to the university gym so I may try that out again. It will help me decide if I want to get an alumni membership or not in the fall (since that is when the exercise classes start up again).

I will leave you today with a few pictures and my measurements (click to see the bigger). Honestly, I really haven’t lost many inches in the last 20 pounds for some strange reason so it is hard to see the differences between today and the last picture, but between today and when I started… it is just AMAZING to me!!