Clearing some obstacles...

      So, I had promised to try and update this once a week even if I didn't have much  to really post about, I had figured last time that this week would be kinda short as I was sort of in a holding pattern between appointments and hadn't seen much of a change recently...boy was I wrong.

It doesn't matter what kind of diet you are on or what approach you take to loosing weight if you have more than I would say 40 pounds to loose, at some point during the process you are going to have a plateau.  It didn't end up lasting very long but I had a bit of a plateau recently. I got to 347 pounds and then just hovered between 350 and 347 for about a week and a half. I had been sticking dogmattically to my diet and had been getting a lot of excercise too.

You may say "It was only a week and a half couldn't be that big of a deal." and you are right but when you go from loosing a little more than a pound a day for a month to nothing and even gaining a pound or two, especially when you have a pretty long diet history without success you still get a little depressed.

As I mentioned last post I had gone back to work last Tuesday.  Tuesday evening I started thinking something might be wrong.  I couldn't even eat the small Quantities I was supposed to be eating. I would eat maybe a third of an ounce and be full and feel full and somewhat bloated for an hour or so and I suddenly didn't have much energy.  Turns out I had what they call a stricture, and it is a complication that between a quarter and a third of people who have the surgery I had end up developing.
 
Because of the stricture, which I found out about on Wednesday but that they couldn't fix until Friday I had to revert back to the previous phase of the diet with the 5 really soft foods.  This was really discouraging because after 2 weeks of only those 5 foods I was really tired of all of them.

I will try not to get to graphic here but try and explain what a stricture is.  When I had the surgery they removed a majority of my stomach and a few feet of the small intestine and reattached the remaining stomach pouch to the small intestines. Where they make that connection scar tissue forms as the connection heals.  in several cases the scar tissue  shrinks the hole to the point where even soft or pureed food have issues passing thru the opening.  In my case the hole had shrunk to about the diamiter of the tube of ink in a Bic ink pen.

"So how do they fix it?" you may ask... and I am glad you asked.  It is actually pretty simple, really. I had to go back to the hospital where they put me under and stuck a camera and a balloon down my throat into my stomach pouch, they put the balloon into the hole and inflate it, stretching the opening until it is back to the correct size.  They say that 50-60% of those that have a stricture will develop it a second time So I may have to do that again.  Which is fine, it wasn't too bad really, I was in and out of the hospital including paperwork, prep and recovery in under 3 hours and and had no discomfort at all from the procedure.

I quickly realized that the stricture, at least in part, had been responsible for my plateau and after it was fixed I started loosing again right away.  I weighed Sunday morning and was down to 342, I am guessing I may be under 340 now but don't like to weigh too often.  I am guessing I will be near 335 next Sunday or Monday and that will be another 20 pound milestone so I should have a few new pictures next week.

I had been doing a lot of walking and slowly building up from just a few blocks at a time in the first week or so to a couple of miles a day recently but I didn't think it was enough and really wanted to get back to the gym and really drive myself.  I am still under a lifting restriction but as long as I am careful I can do cardio.  The office building I work in just underwent a pretty major remodel, in the process they put in a workout room and some locker rooms.  It's not to bad of a setup 4-5 treadmills, a few elipticals, a few stationary bikes, a universal weight machind and a couple of weight benches and some free weights.
 
I decided to give it a try, I will not be going back, it will be back to 24 Hour Fitness for me (didn't like their elipticals and the locker rooms were really poorly designed).  I really love elipticals so I tried it first and the mechanics were just not right for me and there was no way of adjusting it. So I just decided to do the treadmill.

I had never aspired to be a "runner", but I do aspire to reach a point of being fit not just skinny and I think that being a well-rounded fit person would include running so I decided to start "Couch to 5k", for those who don't know "Couch to 5k" (or "C25k) is a structured program designed to take novice beginners and get them from no running at all to being able to run 5k without walking in 2-3 months.  So today was day 1, which was basically a 5 minute warm up followed by alternating run for a minute walk for four minutes fo 30 minutes and a 5 minute cooldown.  I have never really enjoyed walking on treadmills but I really enjoyed it today and am looking forward to progressing in the program.

As many of you know I like to put a little bit in here about the other major change in my life and that is that I am gonna become a daddy in roughly 1 and a half to two months. So the update is that Aprils bursitis in her hips is finally starting to relax and April is feeling a lot better.  Little Evren seems to be doing fine, heis kicking up a storm and taking the occasional nap on mommys organs which of course is not fun.  We are expecting him to turn head down in the next few weeks , right now he is laying horizontally like he is relaxing in a hammock.  We also had a baby shower down in my hometown of Loveland this weekend and got lots of good stuff for Evren. Thank you to anyone that was there.

Well as always thanks for reading and of course thanks for the toughts and prayers and for the encouragement.  Be on the lookout for some new pics next week.  God bless.



One last thing I gotta mention just because I am so pumped (and it's still months until preseason football starts). My favorite QB since Elway retired, Peyton Manning, is the new starting QB for my beloved Broncos!!! How freakin' awesome is that!!! GO BRONCOS!! (sorry, had to do it).