Well – Today was back to the work world. It was so nice to be able to travel to Cincinnati to spend Thanksgiving with my family. Now that I’m back to work I realize how fast the end of the year is coming. It is a busy and stressful time at work. I have so much to do and get caught up on.
While in Cincinnati, Tommie and I participated in our first 10K, with my sister, Billie. I had no idea what to expect. I set a goal for myself of finishing in under 2 hours. I wasn’t sure how I’d tire out and slow down during the race. I walked with Tommie up until about 4 1/2 or so miles. It was FREEZING!! It was 19 degrees when we got there with a wind chill of 11 degrees! Once we were standing outside waiting for the race to start, my feet starting going numb. I had two layers of socks on, two layers of pants and three layers of shirts plus a hoodie. It took two miles before I started to be able to feel my feet again. That was a bit painful. The course brought us through two states. We crossed the state line from Ohio into Kentucky and back. My parents and Jonathan (my brother in law) came out to watch the race and cheer us on. It was nice to see them at mile 3 and at the finish line. My Mom got a few pics. This is one of my favorites. I turned back to say bye and you can see my breath in the sun. This was half way through.
I ended up finishing the race in 1:38 minutes. I was very pleased with that time…..even if it is quite a bit slower than my 5K pace. Our next 5K will be next weekend. We’ll be doing the Christmas Light Run in North Kansas City on Dec 14th. We have a few friends who will be joining us for it. It will be a night walk/run, so not sure how cold it’s going to be.
I fell off my diet a bit while on vacation, so gained a few pounds. Time to get back on track. Also – after the race, I had a bit of a scary moment. As we were picking up our freebies, I drank half a bottle of sample size Sunny D. About 5 mins or so after drinking it I started getting horrible pains in my stomach. It was double over pain and I sort of lost my footing a bit and had to hold on to my sister. Felt a little light headed. I ended up having to get out of line and find somewhere to sit down before I passed out. It passed after several minutes (or what felt like several minutes), but it was NOT pleasant. I have had some discomfort when I drink since surgery. I’m not sure if I developed an ulcer or anything and the acid in the drink caused the pain or not? It’s something I should really bring up to my surgeon. I know he’s mentioned going in with a scope to check it out if I keep having discomfort. It just hasn’t been bad enough to mention my past few visits. I know I had my sister worried. I was secretly worried, myself, for a little while.
Billie, Jonathan, Tommie and I went and saw the second Hunger Games movie. Billie is the only one that has read the books, so she was amused at our reactions to the movie and our guesses on what will happen in the last movie. This movie was nothing like I expected, so I’m assuming my guesses for the last movie are way off too. I have the books, but probably won’t read them until after all the movies come out.
I feel I have reached a point in my weight loss where it is becoming harder. I think this might be the point where people who are going to gain the weight back start to gain. Yes – already. I think I have reached the end of my “honeymoon phase”. The good thing though is that I’ve gotten this far and I am able to be more active. I’m REALLY having to watch what I eat, because at this point, I can pretty much eat whatever I like. Granted, I can’t eat as much as I used to, but if I don’t eat the right TYPE of food, I don’t lose. I didn’t get to the weight that I did because losing weight is easy for me. My body fights against me at every turn. It’s not even that I always eat more than others – my metabolism really sucks. I’ve been stalled for a couple months now. I gained a few over the holiday and we still have another holiday to come, which I’ll be spending celebrating at three different family dinners, at least! It’s a rough time of year, but a fun time of year. I tend to just forget things and enjoy myself for the couple of months. The colder weather requires a change up of the workout routine also. I have 60 more lbs to go to reach my final goal weight. My Grandma has always told me that I’m stubborn enough to do it if I want. We shall see! Ha ha. For a while I was excited at what I saw in pictures on my loss. I really started seeing it. Now though it seems my mind has adjusted and I just see my fat self again.
While in Cincinnati, we brought the kids their Christmas gifts and let them open them, since we’d all be together. It was really nice to be able to see them open them. I’m sure the kids loved it too!! I wasn’t expecting gifts myself, but got several. I’ll probably post about them later on Facebook. I’m still trying to gather myself now that I’m back.
When I got back I had my blood work results waiting for me. All my blood work is looking wonderful. I’m SLIGHTLY low on Iron, so I’ll just have them keep an eye on that in the future. Sometimes with Gastric Bypass patients, we have issues with Iron absorbency and I might need to get some Iron infusions in the future. It had been three years since they had checked my cholesterol. At that point (and prior) I had been borderline high cholesterol. I was on medicine for it for a while before I decided to stop taking it. I was happy to see that my levels were completely normal now. I’m now down to two prescriptions. (one I will always have to take) I’m thinking I can stop taking my acid reflux medicine if and when I have a scope done to make sure everything is OK there. Another nice thing that has happened is that I haven’t had a “stomach episode” ever since surgery! That means so much to me! They never could figure out the cause for it, but it was very painful and horrible when it happened. I had an episode shortly before surgery and I don’t think I’ve gone this far in between episodes for YEARS, so ((knock on wood)) I’m hoping they are a part of my past forever!
Well – I worked late trying to figure out my numbers with work, and I’m ready to get away from the computer, so I’m going to go ahead and end my entry here. Thanks for reading!