I find that it's somewhat depressing how much my posts now revolve around the unique brand of torture (i.e. diet) that I've chosen to inflict upon myself. What can I say? 80% of activities for the average individual in my age bracket without children revolve around food and/or alcohol, neither of which I can really indulge in. This past week was, by far and away, harder than the first week. Perhaps it was a poor choice on my part to travel to the mecca of food and drink in excess so early on in my new lifestyle. I'm proud to say I didn't cheat at all. I felt like crap most of the time though. I'm just not equipped to walk around Manhattan for hours on what little calories I get to ingest per day. Not only that, but I'm not really able to stay awake for that long either. I simply don't have the energy.
Yesterday I had my week 2 weigh in. The word "disappointed" doesn't even begin to explain how I felt. I probably walked like 5 miles on Saturday. I didn't cheat once. I took all my stupid pills. I watched as my friends and family ate some of my favorite foods while I munched on soy nuts and sipped on diet coke. (P.S. that's hard.) Anyway, my total poundage lost in week too was a lousy 3.3 lbs. For those of you counting, that brings my total to 9.7 lbs down since 2 weeks ago.
So where did I go wrong?
First let me start by saying that I think it's completely ridiculous the inconsistency in the helpfulness of people at the doctors office that I'm going to. The first lady told me I'd lose 10 pounds my first week. FAIL. The second one failed to mention to me (despite the fact that I told her I was going to NYC and was worried I wouldn't be able to stay up long enough) that I should just get extra meal replacements for the extra hours that I need to stay up. Instead, I chose to try and spread out my meals to ever 4 hours instead of every two. BAD idea. I felt horrible. My speech was slurred, I felt nauseous, I couldn't concentrate, I was dizzy. Oh, and she also failed to mention to me that there's a list of lean protiens that I can have instead of my meal replacements along with the serving sizes. Uh, all things that would have been good to know BEFORE I left to for NYC. It sure would have been nice to be eating a small chicken breast and veggies instead of sitting there and feeling miserable while other people ate.
The third person I met with was very helpful. She gave me the lean protien list in case there's a special occasion that I'd like to actually eat something other than a shake at. She also told me that the most likely reasons that I didn't lose more this week are because I didn't eat enough or often enough for how long I was awake and therefore my body started thinking it should hold on to everything it gets. She also said I probably didn't drink enough and maybe the flight made me retain some water as well.
All I know is that 3.3 lbs sure doesn't seem worth it for what I had to endure this past weekend. I really hope that things start to improve next week or I kind of think I'm over this whole thing.
4.27.2010
4.19.2010
It's always better to be pleasantly surprised...
...than horribly disappointed. That's always been my motto, anyway. This is something I've found myself saying a few times in the past few days. A couple different people I know were undersold the recovery time on surgeries that they had. It stands to reason that a doctor worth his fancy degree and overpriced fees would be smarter about setting expectations with patients. I mean, if you're getting arthroscopic surgery on your shoulder or getting your tonsils out, you expect your doctor to be honest, right? No deal. Apparently, the people I've talked to have told me that they were told they'd be back to work in a matter of days. Here we are weeks later, and my pals are still out of commission.
The same thing happened to me today. I had my 1 week appointment at the bariatric doctor's office today. Mind you, I was told that I could expect to lose an average of 10 pounds in the first week since I'm essentially an anorexic with a prescription. Now, I don't claim to be the most disciplined human being on the planet (especially when it comes to food) but I was so damn regimented this week. I did EVERYTHING these people told me to do. I followed their directions to the letter. My scale at home had me thinking I'd lost at least 9 pounds. That's acceptable. Then I go into the office and they tell me I've lost 6.4 pounds in my first week. If I hadn't been oversold what I'd lose, I'd probably be ecstatic about this. However, compared to 10, that's just anti-climactic.
When I told the nutritionist that I was disappointed, she was horrified. "You lost 6.4 lbs in 1 week, how could you possibly be disappointed? I mean, what did you expect?!", she said. I explained to her that the first person I spoke to told me people lose an average of 10 lbs a week. She looked incredulous and said that it was extremely rare for a female to lose that much weight in 1 week. Sometimes it happens with extremely overweight men, but not women.
Okay, so let me get this straight...either this lady who I first spoke to was a bafoon, or she thought that I was a dude. Actually, in both circumstances, she's a bafoon. Maybe it's my bitchy hungry inner child that feels outraged...but I'm peeved. 6.4 lbs in a week should warrant a celebration (unfortunately devoid of cupcakes...) but instead I felt like a failure.
Anyway, I wish more people would subscribe to my school of thought. It's always better to be pleasantly surprised than horribly disappointed...
The same thing happened to me today. I had my 1 week appointment at the bariatric doctor's office today. Mind you, I was told that I could expect to lose an average of 10 pounds in the first week since I'm essentially an anorexic with a prescription. Now, I don't claim to be the most disciplined human being on the planet (especially when it comes to food) but I was so damn regimented this week. I did EVERYTHING these people told me to do. I followed their directions to the letter. My scale at home had me thinking I'd lost at least 9 pounds. That's acceptable. Then I go into the office and they tell me I've lost 6.4 pounds in my first week. If I hadn't been oversold what I'd lose, I'd probably be ecstatic about this. However, compared to 10, that's just anti-climactic.
When I told the nutritionist that I was disappointed, she was horrified. "You lost 6.4 lbs in 1 week, how could you possibly be disappointed? I mean, what did you expect?!", she said. I explained to her that the first person I spoke to told me people lose an average of 10 lbs a week. She looked incredulous and said that it was extremely rare for a female to lose that much weight in 1 week. Sometimes it happens with extremely overweight men, but not women.
Okay, so let me get this straight...either this lady who I first spoke to was a bafoon, or she thought that I was a dude. Actually, in both circumstances, she's a bafoon. Maybe it's my bitchy hungry inner child that feels outraged...but I'm peeved. 6.4 lbs in a week should warrant a celebration (unfortunately devoid of cupcakes...) but instead I felt like a failure.
Anyway, I wish more people would subscribe to my school of thought. It's always better to be pleasantly surprised than horribly disappointed...
4.14.2010
1 down, 55 to go...
The first 24 hours have passed and I'm happy to say that I'm alive and haven't passed out, thus far. The first day was hard, but probably not for the reasons that you think. Here are the top things that sucked yesterday:
- Taking smelly giant vitamins in bulk all damn day. First thing in the morning, I literally had to swallow 9 giant pills. We're talking about a person who hates taking advil even when I have a pretty bad headache. I hate taking pills. I especially hate taking them when they smell like Satan's rectum and are the size of my thumb.
- Eating every 2 hours. Man, you wouldn't even believe how disruptive and annoying it is to have your alarm go off every two hours to remind you to either eat or eat and take pills. I feel like I've barely recovered from the last episode of eating/taking pills by the time it's time to do it all over again.
- Eating the "food" I've been given. Literally, every single thing I ate yesterday tasted a lot like dirt, mixed with chalk, and covered by either salsa, chocolate, strawberry or vanilla. Um, ewww.
- Rage blackouts. I think I was relatively good about hiding the fact that I was having violent hallucinations all day about doing bad things to people for things as simple as not using a turn signal, to cutting in front of me in line at the grocery store. I really hope Sudhir can put up with me for the next 55 days. He bore the brunt of it. I was sitting there eating a bag of Soy Nuts one by one. He asks me, "How many of those are there in the bag?" My immediate thought was "Uh, I don't know, babe...I didn't effing count them." Instead I just looked at him blankly for a while, hopefully expressing that I didn't feel like summoning up the energy to answer that snidely. Then he said "Wow, they really give you a lot of them, huh?" Now, I'm not proud of how angry this really made me. I again stared at him blankly and said very calmly, "Ya know, I've only eaten like 400 calories so far today so it sure doesn't feel like a lot."
- Frequent peeing. If you ask any of my friends, they'll tell you how I'm a lot like a camel. I can go literally an entire day without using the restroom. All of a sudden, I feel like I need to go all the time. Probably because I have to drink so much water to down all the damn vitamins.
- Watching TV is torture. I tried watching a couple of my favorite shows last night. "How I Met Your Mother" and "Lost". There was a scene in "How I Met Your Mother" where they order a pizza and I felt like crying. The commercials during "Lost" were a unique brand of torture as well.
- Not feeling hungry. The food was so gross but it was like some magical food air bag that made my stomach feel really full all day long.
- The silver lining. I can eat all the salsa, sugar free jello and pickles that I want. Too bad it turns out that I hate pickles. (Oh, and bought 4 jars already...I hope Sudhir likes them.)
- Losing 1.6 pounds in 24 hours. If that's not progress, I don't know what is.
- Feeling of accomplishment. I got a prescription for speed to help with controlling my appetite, as well as an herbal appetite suppressant. I didn't use either of them yesterday and made it through the day without a great deal of difficulty. While there was a brief moment of wanting to dive head first into the meat at the deli while shopping for the afore mentioned pickles and jello, I perservered.
4.12.2010
D-Day Eve...
As I look to tomorrow and see the end of dining as a social activity, it's hard to not be terrified. I just got back from my doctor appointment and plan to begin essentially starving myself tomorrow.
But for tonight, I plan on indulging in a meal so ridiculous, it will put most other meals I've had in the past 31 years to shame. We'll appoint tonight's meal as "The Last Supper". Such a momentous occasion certainly warrants using quotation marks and title caps, wouldn't you say? If I'm going without food for the next 8 weeks, I'm going out with a bang! So tonight, I dine on Filet Mignon, bathed in an unreasonable amount of butter. This will be accompanied by Ruth's Chris sweet potato casserole; A dish SO good, if it fell on the floor, I'd put money on you picking it up and eating it anyway...so as not to waste it. Also accompanying said filet mignon will be potatoes au gratin. All of this is followed up by a chocolate volcano explosion.
So what to expect tomorrow? I'll be eating every 2 hours starting at 7:30am, a grand total of 7 times. That part wasn't a surprise. What WAS a surprise was the fact that I'll be swallowing 39 pills a day. Apparently, when you become anorexic, you have to take A LOT of supplements. This is including, but not limited to Vitamin D, Calcium, Omega 3, Salt Tabs, Green tea pills, Chromium, and some weird sounding natural appetite suppressant. (Don't worry, they're also prescribing something more powerful, i.e. speed.)
I can't even imagine how I'll survive, but at the end of all this, I should be a 4th-grader lighter and a whole heck of a lot healthier. How can you argue with that? Plus, I figure I can pretty much do anything for 8 weeks, right?
Here's hoping...
But for tonight, I plan on indulging in a meal so ridiculous, it will put most other meals I've had in the past 31 years to shame. We'll appoint tonight's meal as "The Last Supper". Such a momentous occasion certainly warrants using quotation marks and title caps, wouldn't you say? If I'm going without food for the next 8 weeks, I'm going out with a bang! So tonight, I dine on Filet Mignon, bathed in an unreasonable amount of butter. This will be accompanied by Ruth's Chris sweet potato casserole; A dish SO good, if it fell on the floor, I'd put money on you picking it up and eating it anyway...so as not to waste it. Also accompanying said filet mignon will be potatoes au gratin. All of this is followed up by a chocolate volcano explosion.
So what to expect tomorrow? I'll be eating every 2 hours starting at 7:30am, a grand total of 7 times. That part wasn't a surprise. What WAS a surprise was the fact that I'll be swallowing 39 pills a day. Apparently, when you become anorexic, you have to take A LOT of supplements. This is including, but not limited to Vitamin D, Calcium, Omega 3, Salt Tabs, Green tea pills, Chromium, and some weird sounding natural appetite suppressant. (Don't worry, they're also prescribing something more powerful, i.e. speed.)
I can't even imagine how I'll survive, but at the end of all this, I should be a 4th-grader lighter and a whole heck of a lot healthier. How can you argue with that? Plus, I figure I can pretty much do anything for 8 weeks, right?
Here's hoping...
4.06.2010
Makeover from Hell...
This past Thursday was what one would call "A bad day." Pretty much everything that could go wrong, did in fact go wrong. I'll spare you all the really boring details, but here are the highlights:
Before we get into the gory details of what happened to me, (I say happened to me because afterwords I felt dirty and assaulted) I feel that it's necessary to describe to you the woman who was administering said "makeover". She's in her late 40's, is wearing copious amounts of sparkly green eyeshadow, an unnatural shade of bright red/pink lipstick on her collagen filled lips, and lastly, is unable to show any sort of emotion due to unreasonable amounts of juvederm/botox. While I was slightly alarmed at this lady's idea of what good makeup means, I figured I couldn't begrudge her personal sense of what looks good on her.
She started by asking me how I usually do my makeup. I proceed to tell her that most people don't even know that I wear a ton of makeup and that most of it that I put on is just to even out my skin because I have a lot of scarring. She really had me going when she did that whole "Active Listening" thing and said back to me "Oh, so you go for more of the natural look. Okay, we'll do that then." Try to remember that she said the previous sentence whilst you read the rest of this blog post.
So the very first thing she does is pull out some concealers, foundations, and powders. They range from a Nicole Kidman fair to the darkest shade you can think of. She immediately picks out the second to darkest hue and says "I think this will be perfect for you!" Mind you, I've been eying a shade about 7 lighter than this and thinking that's my shade. I'm thinking if she uses the shade she wants to, I'm gonna look like that offensive episode of "All in the Family" where Archie Bunker goes black face. Eeek. I talked her out of that luckily.
Then, she starts coating my face with a very weird shade of pink something or another and says it's to absorb the oil. Then she paints on concealer, tops it with foundation, and then puts on some powder. I have yet to look at myself in a mirror because the room we're in doesn't have one. She starts applying eye makeup (which I very rarely wear.) First she uses a sparkly pink all the way up to my eyebrow, then a gold sparkly color over that, and then she tops it all off with a very thick coat of purple eyeliner which she puts on the top and the bottom. The tail end that she added at the corners would have put Taylor Swift to shame. I mean, they went all the way up to my hairline. She puts on a coat of white mascara, followed by a coat of black sparkly mascara. Then she goes in with a silvery black powder and "fills in" my eyebrows because they're "sparse". The cherry on top was a dark pink lip liner filled in with sparkly light pink lip gloss (because when you do dramatic eyes, the lips should blend in.) When all is said and done, I felt like I had about 25 pounds of makeup on my face. I was absolutely horrified to see what this woman had done to me. When I walked out of the room and looked in the mirror, I was at a complete loss for words. I looked like a mix between Carmen Electra and Groucho Marks.
There was a guy fixing the toilet and when he walked out and started to walk towards me and looked up, I actually saw and heard an audible gasp. This is not my imagination. I was supposed to be responsible for picking up dinner at Chipotle so I had to go out in PUBLIC like this. I got to the car (where it was still perfectly sunny outside) and looked at the mirror in the car. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. In what universe was what this lady did to me considered "The natural look??" The Sunset Strip? The Bunny Ranch? I'm not really sure...
I spent a solid 20 minutes in the car trying to wipe off all the crap around my eyes. So much so, that my hands were covered in gold, pink and purple sparkles. When I touched the navigation system in the car, it looked the a crime scene in which a fairy was murdered and bled sparkles all over the car. I thought I did a decent job getting it all off.
I decided not to wash it off and start over when I got home because I knew it would be dark by the time we went out of drinks. Even so, I warned KT..."Please don't judge me because I look like a prostitute. I swear I didn't do it to myself..." Then as we walked out of the building, she turns to Sudhir and whispers "Who did that to her??"
Nuff said.
Unfortunately, I didn't take any photographic evidence of the horrors that I faced that day. Instead, this is what we'll call an artistic recreation of what I imagine I looked like to the outside world. Enjoy.
- Not one but two different people at work told me that I might be seen as a villain because "I come in with my fancy degree and tell people that what they've done is wrong." A) I do not have a fancy degree. B) I don't tell people what they've done is wrong...I just tell them a better way. C) Just because someone comes up with an idea, doesn't mean that it's the best way to do it. I'm not trying to tell anyone their baby is ugly. It's not my fault that some people have unreasonable attachments to crappy software. Please see previous posts about the socially inept developers I have to work with.
- My hands feel like twisted, dead objects due to the number of screens I've been mocking up at work lately. I went to a meeting in which people asked me to redo something I'd already redone about 1.2 million times.
- I got a MacBook Pro at work, which would be awesome under normal circumstances, but our company doesn't "support" Macs. This essentially means that I'm stuck trying to figure out how to get around our convoluted technical infrastructure in order to get connected to the network and do any work. This would all be fine and dandy if I had even an ounce of network, technical savvy. I do not. Basically, the tech guy hung up on me. I have a lot of work to do...therefore a computer is kind of an asset. This sent me over the edge and tears started welling up in my eyes.
- The guy who sits across from me felt sorry for me and offered to buy me lunch. I asked for the Red Dragon Chicken. Instead when it came, I got the Seafood delight. I hate seafood. My lunch had tentacles and various other disgusting looking sea creatures.
I'm going to call this "The Before Picture"
Before we get into the gory details of what happened to me, (I say happened to me because afterwords I felt dirty and assaulted) I feel that it's necessary to describe to you the woman who was administering said "makeover". She's in her late 40's, is wearing copious amounts of sparkly green eyeshadow, an unnatural shade of bright red/pink lipstick on her collagen filled lips, and lastly, is unable to show any sort of emotion due to unreasonable amounts of juvederm/botox. While I was slightly alarmed at this lady's idea of what good makeup means, I figured I couldn't begrudge her personal sense of what looks good on her.
She started by asking me how I usually do my makeup. I proceed to tell her that most people don't even know that I wear a ton of makeup and that most of it that I put on is just to even out my skin because I have a lot of scarring. She really had me going when she did that whole "Active Listening" thing and said back to me "Oh, so you go for more of the natural look. Okay, we'll do that then." Try to remember that she said the previous sentence whilst you read the rest of this blog post.
So the very first thing she does is pull out some concealers, foundations, and powders. They range from a Nicole Kidman fair to the darkest shade you can think of. She immediately picks out the second to darkest hue and says "I think this will be perfect for you!" Mind you, I've been eying a shade about 7 lighter than this and thinking that's my shade. I'm thinking if she uses the shade she wants to, I'm gonna look like that offensive episode of "All in the Family" where Archie Bunker goes black face. Eeek. I talked her out of that luckily.
Then, she starts coating my face with a very weird shade of pink something or another and says it's to absorb the oil. Then she paints on concealer, tops it with foundation, and then puts on some powder. I have yet to look at myself in a mirror because the room we're in doesn't have one. She starts applying eye makeup (which I very rarely wear.) First she uses a sparkly pink all the way up to my eyebrow, then a gold sparkly color over that, and then she tops it all off with a very thick coat of purple eyeliner which she puts on the top and the bottom. The tail end that she added at the corners would have put Taylor Swift to shame. I mean, they went all the way up to my hairline. She puts on a coat of white mascara, followed by a coat of black sparkly mascara. Then she goes in with a silvery black powder and "fills in" my eyebrows because they're "sparse". The cherry on top was a dark pink lip liner filled in with sparkly light pink lip gloss (because when you do dramatic eyes, the lips should blend in.) When all is said and done, I felt like I had about 25 pounds of makeup on my face. I was absolutely horrified to see what this woman had done to me. When I walked out of the room and looked in the mirror, I was at a complete loss for words. I looked like a mix between Carmen Electra and Groucho Marks.
There was a guy fixing the toilet and when he walked out and started to walk towards me and looked up, I actually saw and heard an audible gasp. This is not my imagination. I was supposed to be responsible for picking up dinner at Chipotle so I had to go out in PUBLIC like this. I got to the car (where it was still perfectly sunny outside) and looked at the mirror in the car. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. In what universe was what this lady did to me considered "The natural look??" The Sunset Strip? The Bunny Ranch? I'm not really sure...
I spent a solid 20 minutes in the car trying to wipe off all the crap around my eyes. So much so, that my hands were covered in gold, pink and purple sparkles. When I touched the navigation system in the car, it looked the a crime scene in which a fairy was murdered and bled sparkles all over the car. I thought I did a decent job getting it all off.
I decided not to wash it off and start over when I got home because I knew it would be dark by the time we went out of drinks. Even so, I warned KT..."Please don't judge me because I look like a prostitute. I swear I didn't do it to myself..." Then as we walked out of the building, she turns to Sudhir and whispers "Who did that to her??"
Nuff said.
Unfortunately, I didn't take any photographic evidence of the horrors that I faced that day. Instead, this is what we'll call an artistic recreation of what I imagine I looked like to the outside world. Enjoy.
The After Shot
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